遠距醫療帶給醫檢師的未來展望

The Future of Telemedicine for Biomedical Laboratory Scientists

遠距醫療可透過結合通訊技術與醫療專業技術，打破空間的疆界，讓醫事人員提供更多醫療服務，目前在海內外與偏鄉地區均已廣泛運用。正由於遠距醫療服務可以突破距離的限制，許多研究已指出，遠距醫療應用可以有效降低醫療支出、節省就醫成本、改善預後，並可彌補長期照護與偏鄉醫療需求缺口。在檢驗醫學中，遠距檢驗諮詢、遠距影像判讀與遠距醫療監控是醫檢師或臨床病理醫師最常使用的遠距醫療類型。然而，在上述遠距醫療服務中，檢驗數值與影像仍需由特定醫檢師或臨床病理醫師，抽出時間完成判讀，再將判讀結果傳送至千里之外。如此一來，遠距醫療仍無法提供即時的醫療服務。有鑑於科技發展快速，人工智慧與微流體技術的發展，將有機會扭轉現今的醫療生態與醫療困境，協助醫檢師或臨床病理醫師提供即時的遠距醫療服務。本篇綜合評論將從醫檢師的角度切入，先了解現今遠距醫療於檢驗醫學的應用，再探討人工智慧與微流體技術結合遠距醫療於檢驗醫學的未來展望。期望可以透過本篇文章，協助醫檢師了解遠距醫療於檢驗醫學的發展方向，進而優化檢驗服務，提供病患更好的醫療品質。

Telemedicine is widely used for medical care at a distance with telecommunication technology in both wealthy and resource-limited settings. Many benefits of telemedicine can be envisaged, including reduction in hospital readmissions, improvements for clinical outcomes, decreases in medical care costs, as well as developing a solution to the population aging problem in home health. Applications of teleconsultation, teleimaging and telemonitoring are widely used in the clinical laboratory. Although above-mentioned telemedicine services primarily centered on providing medical services at a distance to save commute costs, in certain situations (e.g. shortage of manpower with adequate training), medical technologists or clinical pathologists could only make responses to requestors later or during their duty period. Therefore, in this asynchronous case, it is hard to meet requestors' demands by offering real-time telemedicine services. The fastest growing trends in artificial intelligence (AI) and microfluidics could help medical technologists or clinical pathologists offer more timely and customizable telemedicine services. In this review, we would like to discuss the current applications of telemedicine, future prospects of telemedicine with the integration of AI and microtechnology, and opportunities of clinical practice optimization with telemedicine in the clinical laboratory.