TeleHealth Comments?? Monitoring a patient by computer....Replacing nurses skills?

[Monica RN,BSN]

I read an article in Homehealth care magazine, current issue on tele-health monitoring. Apparently, this device is placed in a patient's home, it is programmed to prompt the patient at a specific time to go to it and get their vital signs recorded, and asks a series of 3-5 questions about their specific health condition... information is transferred back to a central office and reviewed by a nurse who can make a decision to call the patient for follow up.. some have a screen where a nurse can sit in an office and see the patient on the computer screen... thus eliminating or reducing patient visits to their home by a visiting nurse, or having to go into a doctor's office...I think technology is very advanced, but have a problem with a machine attempting to replace what we have spent years, even decades becoming experts in our fields, and our skills to do comprehensive assessments. These are stated to be in use all over the USA already. Anyone use them? and what do you think about being replaced by computer monitors? Answer to the nursing shortage? or more potential for less nursing positions related to less need ?

[live4today, RN]

Well....just one more way to discount what nurses contribute to healthcare. However.........there are robots being used as doctors, too, but they probably like that since they get to be paid for having the ability to "see" their patients from a monitor at home while the robot relays their message to their patients. At least the patients can see their doctor's face on the monitor that is installed in the robot.

Technology can be a bite in the orifice sometimes. It has shown us what good it is in making things easier for us, but it is also showing us ways in which it will hurt us in the long run.

I demand a human nurse by my bedside....not some computer telehealth monitor. :angryfire