Telemedicine Treatment and Care for Patients with Intellectual Disability.

Krzysztof Krysta,Marek Krzystanek,Albert Diefenbacher,Monika Romańczyk

doi:10.3390/ijerph18041746

Abstract

In recent years, telemedicine has been developing very dynamically. The development of new technologies allows their use in the treatment of dermatological, cardiological, endocrine and other diseases. However, there are few reports on the use of digital technologies in the mental health care of people with intellectual disabilities. Intellectual disability is a disease that affects a large number of people. Patients suffering from intellectual disability encounter barriers that make it difficult for them to fully use telemedicine, however, these barriers can be overcome with appropriate support and adaptation. A review of the literature on telemedicine solutions in the care of people with intellectual disabilities indicates that the applications support the communication of these people with the doctor, enable simple behavioral interventions, stimulate cooperation in treatment, provide simple medical education as well as record medical data for the doctor. The authors present the potential risks related to the use of telemedicine solutions for people with intellectual disabilities as well as the project of creating a new, multi-module telemedicine system.

Highlights

Intellectual disability is a mental disorder that affects a significant number of people.In England, for example, it affects 1 million adults, which is approximately 2% of the country’s population [1]
The search provided with the use of above terms resulted in finding 16 manuscripts; after limiting the selection only to original papers fulfilling the criteria of good quality research studies, the papers listed in the table (Table 1) were included in the analysis: The study by Salgado et al (2018) is interesting in the context of designing telemedicine applications for the care of people with intellectual disabilities
Based on the available functions in telemedicine applications (42 functions grouped into 4 modules), the respondents were to come to a consensus as to the most preferred ones for controlling drug intake

Summary

Introduction

Intellectual disability is a mental disorder that affects a significant number of people.In England, for example, it affects 1 million adults, which is approximately 2% of the country’s population [1]. Intellectual disability is a mental disorder that affects a significant number of people. People with intellectual disabilities experience cognitive and adaptive deficits throughout their lives, which significantly translate into everyday life and make it difficult to obtain education, career development and social contacts [2]. They may experience difficulties in obtaining adequate medical care. The purpose of using digital technologies in psychiatry is to help patients to achieve well-being as well as to assess, treat and monitor mental illness. In people with intellectual disabilities, it is important to ensure that they are efficient and safe in using digital technologies [3]

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