Thinking Out Loud: Telemedicine

Just thinking out loud…

Is this pandemic going to end any time soon? Can Healthcare systems extremely expose to the illness stick to the usual system because this is going to only be temporary? We think the answer is: No, the healthcare system needs to readjust to deal with a situation that keeps outgrowing the healthcare systems' capacity, method, and structure.  

We have 20 years of service as a design/built, construction, maintenance & repair, and project management firm for the federal healthcare system in Puerto Rico. As a compromise we keep updating ourselves in order to offer the most state-of-the-art technology services; but this is something new to all of us, to the world. 

Computers & Internet have been around for a long time. In the healthcare system we have seen it in the use of electronic records, but it is now that the healthcare organization needs them and depends on them for its existence. Telemedicine has been around for a while, but it is not until now that healthcare providers can benefit from its attributes. To integrate this system into the daily work of healthcare providers it is imperative to reorganize the system, build infrastructure, acquire technology, and to educate the team. There is a lot to consider and to be done.

This is a moment to rethink and reinvent ourselves in order to offer the best solution available to solve new situations of unknown long-term consequences; to be resilient.

We as engineers, as project managers, have a lot to think about. We must adjust our approach during the process of conceptualization and innovate. But that is what science & engineering is all about.