How Can Proxy Servers Improve Telemedicine?
Proxy Servers have various known and unique advantages, including the ones that benefit the telemedicine industry. Wondering what are they? Read this post.
Telemedicine is no longer a premium feature that only privileged customers used to avail of. As COVID-19 crippled the world in many ways, telemedicine has become important for survival. With this, patients can receive medical care from the comfort of their homes.
While the benefits of telemedicine are numerous, there are still some challenges that healthcare providers must overcome in order to provide the best possible care to their patients. One of these challenges is ensuring that telemedicine technologies work smoothly and securely.
Proxy servers can help significantly in this regard. Let’s explore the challenges that healthcare providers face while delivering telemedicine facilities and how the proxy server can fix this issue.
The Glitches In Telemedicine
We have no qualms admitting that if telemedicine were there, things could take an ugly turn when visiting hospitals was more dangerous than staying at home for someone facing minor concerns.
With facilities like video conferencing and remote monitoring, telemedicine improved healthcare delivery. However, we regret to say that telemedicine has weak immunity against network connectivity issues.
When network connectivity issues arise, patients may experience disruptions in care, and healthcare providers may struggle to provide the level of service that patients need.
Below mentioned are a few issues that bother every telemedicine provider.
Bandwidth limitations
Video conferencing and remote monitoring require significant amounts of bandwidth, and if the patient's internet connection is slow or unreliable, it can lead to poor video quality or dropped connections. This can be particularly problematic in remote or rural areas with limited internet infrastructure.
High latency
Latency is like a plague for telemedicine as it keeps on spreading and increasing. It refers to the certain delay between the transmitted and delivered data. Latency is caused because of multiple issues like network congestion, the distance between two parties, and hardware compatibility.
With too high latency, telemedicine fails miserably as there won’t be any audio and video. And if they are there, the delivery will be delayed.
Unsecure Network
When a doctor and a patient are over a call, they might share some sensitive personal and health-related data. The onus of protecting this information comes from healthcare providers. They must take appropriate measures to ensure hackers don’t lay their hands on this data.
Proxy Server - Panacea For Many Technical Issues
All the issues mentioned in the previous section must be fixed ASAP for continual and impressive telemedicine delivery.
A proxy server is a technology whose implementation can fix all the above-mentioned and many more telemedicine issues in one go. It sits between the end-user and web server and forwards the client request only after replacing the original IP address.
Now, with what this IP address is replaced? This IP address is replaced by dummy IP addresses that the proxy server offers. A reputed proxy server will have a wide server network so that people can select the IP address of any location.
This change of the original IP address with a proxy server has a significant role to play in improving telemedicine. For instance:
It Confuses Hackers
Hackers won’t be able to track an end user's online activities as a real IP address is hidden. This way, it can also help protect patient data and prevent unauthorized access to crucial information. The result of this is reduced data breaches.
It can improve Latency.
A proxy server dramatically reduces latency and improves video quality by caching frequently used content and optimizing data transmission. It has a content caching ability that puts frequently accessed content at the disposal of doctors and patients.
It is also helpful in optimizing video conferencing and other telemedicine technologies so patients receive high-quality care without technical glitches or security concerns.
Final Say
Telemedicine is here to stay for good as it’s revolutionizing the healthcare industry beyond unimaginable ways. This is one way to make healthcare approachable to everyone. However, network connectivity can make it restricted and hindered.
One viable way to combat these challenges is to use a proxy server. As explained above, it can help healthcare providers to improve video conferencing quality while saving bandwidth. So, if you want your telemedicine service to be perfect, try using a proxy service to
