Cancer Care & Telemedicine

Cancer, like most diseases, has the power to alter someone’s entire life. Once a patient is diagnosed, they have to deal with frequent doctor visits, hours spent in the waiting room, money spent on gas transportation costs, missed days of work and school, lack of energy to do the things that were once easy to do, and so many more inconveniences. Unfortunately, these lifestyle changes may not be considered or covered by insurance companies. So what is an oncology patient to do? How can they get connected with others in the same situation or gain a better understanding of what their diagnosis means? How can they decrease the amount of money, time, and energy spent on doctor visits? Luckily, there are solutions.

Can Telemedicine help oncology patients? 

A viable solution for oncology patients is telemedicine or teleconsults. Organizations like Walking Miracles, founded by Brett Wilson, are using teleconsults and other technologies to help those with/or who survived cancer. Walking Miracles is a “non-profit organization that empowers children, young adults, adolescents, childhood cancer survivors and their families by connecting them to resources and referral networks that provide hope, and support that addresses their physical, logistical, emotional, and spiritual needs.” This program has created the opportunity for people to connect with others from anywhere in the country.

They use special-made social networks to provide helpful resources. Their patient navigation system and survivorship clinics are completely accessible online. This navigation system offers patients and survivors access to long-term survivorship and treatment education and addresses the travel, emotional, financial, educational and personal needs that would otherwise be neglected.

By connecting patients and their families with a network of professionals, services, and businesses, Walking Miracles is helping survivors regain their independence. Survivors and patients no longer have to feel alone through this process. They are able to connect with family and friends from different states, share their stories in a private community, increase knowledge of their disease, as well as help them communicate with their clinical care team. So even though Walking Miracles is based in West Virginia, they are able to connect and reach so many people through telemedicine and social networks.

Thanks to telemedicine and online resources, organizations like Walking Miracles have the ability to positively affect oncology patients and survivors’ lives. It adds convenience to the situation, as well as adds better access to care, alleviates the work shortages for providers, assist with supplementary issues and reduces health care cost. By using some sort of teleconsult technology, oncology patients can reach their doctors for quality follow-ups, receive comfort, support, and medication when necessary. This use case and the many others speaks wonders of what is possible through telemedicine. Patients can be connected to providers and others all from the comfort of their own home. The more popular telemedicine becomes, the more benefits it can offer patients.

About SimpleVisit

SimpleVisit is a video service which allows patients and providers to connect over the video platform of their choice. With SimpleVisit providers are able to deliver on-demand visits to patients over any device or platform they have available to them. For more information on SimpleVisit and on how we are enabling providers to host virtual visits check out www.SimpleVisit.com