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Between paying nurses, doctors, and assistants, the costs of salaries for healthcare professional certainly adds up overtime. The simple act of taking sending a nurse to one’s home to take their blood pressure or temperature can cost medical companies millions of extra dollars. With a new technology called wireless “Telehealth” systems, patients are given sensors to keep track of their condition around the clock. Not only will hospitals be able to monitor each patient’s condition whenever they way, they can lower the amount of nurses needed to travel the extra distance to monitor a patient’s condition.

The newfound convenience of Telehealth may appear to be its only advantage, but the benefits of wireless sensors goes beyond the reduced travel time for nurses. Many patients who have a certain illness are treated too late into the process; billions of extra dollars are spent on the treatments of diseases and illnesses that could have been diagnosed earlier. Treating a disease earlier in the process reduces treatment costs for insurance companies and the patient, frees up valuable hours for doctors, and gives the patient a better chance of getting better. With the wireless sensors, healthcare professionals can keep track of a patients condition and be notified at anytime if there is any suspicious signs of illness.

By 2012, it is estimated that 15 million systems will be implemented into patients and hospitals nationwide. Will Telehealth actually reduce healthcare costs? In my opinion, wireless sensors are the pathway to simultaneously improving one’s health while reducing costs. My next door neighbor recently survived a one million dollar heart transplant. With one of these wireless sensors, doctors could of kept track of his blood pressure etc… and treat his heart ailments much sooner. One little sensor could have saved Canada one million dollars.

http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/Article/Telehealth-technologies-to-reduce-health-care-costs/492494.aspx