Introduction

By offering mobile applications (apps) to meet ever-increasing consumer demands. in various services including travel as the mobile apps enable new innovative ways of delivering travel services right from a smartphone which can be a game changer for travelers to know and use for their various needs.

Mobile health apps can provide secure communications, make payments, and offer flexibility and convenience. More travelers use travel apps to help make plans to book a flight, a hotel, or transportation. information on their phones by downloading the travel app.

There is a definite shift in the culture of embracing smart technology (with digitalization of travel) as most clients prefer that choice nowadays over in-person visits, especially during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.

Hospitality and Lodging can Offer Improved

Hospitality Services for Travelers with a Telemedicine App and Gain a Market Competitive Advantage make payments and offer flexibility and convenience. More than half of smartphone users get travel-related information on their phones by downloading the app with a good potential for synchronizing.

The benefits of Digitization of Travel is now a growing trend of travel in the same way as banking, shopping online, and medical services are well established. With an aging society and with travel and tourism set to increase post-COVID-19, partnering with an onsite medical clinic the franchise could strongly benefit a hotel.

Now, a new medical App promoted by lodging properties allows a domestic or international traveler with preexisting medical conditions, or with young children traveling to have increased confidence and ease of mind when traveling. A medical App can tie into the current health, spa, and wellness amenities of a resort. A medical App for guests has the potential to become a unique competitive advantage for the lodging property. Background Telemedicine is a way to access healthcare appointments with doctors, psychiatrists, or nurses on the Internet using your phone or computer. These appointments are usually video calls through an App or digital platform. With telemedicine apps, you can receive remote healthcare services from a medical doctor without physically visiting their office. Below are some things to look for in your search for medical Apps:

  • Online chat messaging
  • Email support
  • Telephone calls.

The idea of telemedicine is not to replace clinic visits with a doctor. Instead, it should complement regular healthcare. People may use telemedicine to:

  • talk with a doctor and see if you need a physical appointment
  • request or renew certain prescriptions for medications
  • assess and treat minor health conditions
  • access therapy and other mental health services

Additionally, many telemedicine apps are making strides to become primary care providers for patients rather than for just acute or emergency visits.

Telemedicine is growing in popularity and can provide benefits over traditional doctor visits. People who work full-time may appreciate being able to use telemedicine appointments with doctors outside of traditional business hours, including evenings and weekends. It may also be more convenient for people with children who would otherwise need to find sitters.

Telemedicine also improves access to care for people in more remote areas, older individuals, and individuals living with disabilities. Additionally, it can be helpful for people who frequently travel for tourism and hospitality. Also, for travelers who may forgotten their medications. There is also no need for travel, which can save time, money, stress, and frustration.

Looking for and attending a telemedicine appointment from the comfort of home or your resort hotel room is a far more tempting prospect. Technology trends are changing the hospitality industry, with preferred self-service for travelers, thus incorporating technology with daily operations. to optimize service efficiency, minimize human error, and improve the overall guest experience. Thus, the role of technology in healthcare Hospitality is becoming increasingly important and in increased demand post-COVID pandemic. ProntoCare App was made to support the health and wellness needs of travelers!

Services such as self-check-in, digital payment, and mobile keys all increased by 66% during the pandemic and are expected to continue to rise. The ProntoCare App can be easily downloaded and used by travelers looking for health and wellness services before, during, and after their travel. This proactive approach can help abort many unnecessary costly emergency room visits and even hospitalizations by giving the appropriate care, instructions, and patient education early. This service will be very much needed given the fact that most of the travelers are senior citizens with chronic diseases with high demand for easily accessible healthcare to give those guests peace of mind and put them at ease to enhance their travel and lodging experience. In brief, everybody benefits from the ProntoCare App.

Growing tourism trends and statistics confirm that more senior citizens embrace technology and are more comfortable using digital healthcare just like banking and shopping online the recent Coronavirus Pandemic that accelerated the digital transformation.

ProntoCare offers direct consumers hassle-free healthcare with big savings giving economic challenges post-COVID addressing the Wellness of the guest through proper nutrition and promoting a healthy lifestyle. ProntoCare takes a proactive role in testing for risk factors and diagnosing to prevent and manage chronic diseases. ProntoCare is also offering a convenient Telemedicine app to communicate with various providers delivering the best care remotely with safety and ease, especially for our senior citizen population. So many travelers will benefit from using the ProntoCare App which can be easily downloaded on your smartphone!

Diet-Specific Nutrition For Wellness!

Food is the fuel for our bodies and can be used as medicine to promote wellness, avoiding travel-associated illnesses by having diet-specific orders that match the specific health condition and thus will have an important impact on overall client/guest wellness. A well-balanced diet provides the energy needed to stay active throughout the day. Nutrition is needed to help to stay healthy and help prevent diet-related illnesses. This is becoming increasingly relevant to the client/guest experience which has a direct effect on (the bottom-line) results in addition to name brand, location, and pricing.

The majority of travelers with an extra discretionary fund to spend with an advanced aged and high prevalence of chronic diseases would thus explain the importance of providing the appropriate nutrition services.

Such as diabetes, heart disease, bone disease, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, obesity, and weakened immunity. Additionally, poor nutrition could be a reason for adversely affecting mental well-being causing low mood or depression.

Research has shown adherence to healthy or Mediterranean dietary patterns with high consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, and moderate intake of poultry and dairy products is associated with a reduced risk of depression. Food with a high glycemic index is associated with symptoms of depression. The inflammatory effects of high trans-fat and refined carbohydrates have been proposed to be a mechanism through which the Western diet could have detrimental effects on brain health including cognitive decline and mood disorders. Thus, decreasing the consumption of highly processed and refined (junk) food will provide benefits to both physical health and psychological well-being.

On the contrary, the consumption of the Mediterranean diet has anti-inflammatory effects. Thus, combining healthy nutrition for travelers and technology by using the ProntoCare App to facilitate clients/guests' diet-specific nutrition for wellness as follows:

  1. Guests with high blood pressure would be served a low-salt diet or better with a salt Substitute).
  2. Guests with heart disease and elevated cholesterol will be served a low-cholesterol diet.
  3. Guests with kidney dysfunction would be served a low protein, low salt, low potassium diet.
  4. Guests with type 2 diabetes would be served a low-carbohydrate diet.
  5. Avoid using (Artificial sweeteners) in diabetic patients given the recent World Health Organization (WHO) warning as Aspartame is linked to cancer.
  6. Guests with gout, would avoid serving food with high Uric acid content to avoid acute gout attacks.

In summary, using the mobile app ( ProntoCare) could provide an added advantage for enhanced physical and mental health and wellness for travelers through optimal diet-specific nutrition!

With travel supporting services, Digital Health allows remote access for consults, follow, and management of various illnesses as well as caring for chronic diseases, especially for immobile patients or those with transportation problems. Telemedicine would be a great tool for connecting patients with their trusted providers on a 24/7 basis. Physicians should give their important input in shaping Digital Medicine and its future success in improving access to effective healthcare delivery. They must be a part of the conversation and decision-making alongside the traditional players including Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies.

Digital Medicine can help not only the immediate treatment but can predict and prevent various diseases via root-cause analysis as well as triaging patients appropriately. For example, high salt intake is associated with elevated blood pressure especially in the African American population as they seem to be more salt-sensitive. Similarly, regular intake of (NSAIDs) Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs such as Motrin, Advil, Naproxen, Aleve will certainly lead to Kidney damage, Gastritis, bleeding Ulcer, Congestive Heart Failure, salt and water retention. Thus, avoiding the regular intake of these NSAIDs would prevent these costly and devastating complications. Regular intake of steroids would cause Diabetes, fluid retention, delayed wound healing, osteoporosis resulting in bone fractures and a depressed immune system leading to repeated infections. Avascular necrosis of the head of the femur which is a serious complication occurs in those on chronic steroid therapy resulting in the collapse of the head of the femur. Telemedicine is an important tool in device monitoring such as pacemakers, defibrillators, implanted event monitors, etc. Digital Medicine will help in various aspects of patient education, wellness, and advocacy.

Digital Medicine would be advantageous in answering simple, nonemergent questions through an online portal, chat window, by making an online appointment, or by using a mobile APP. So, the role of Digital Medicine is to improve patient access, customer service, compliance, and outcomes for lower healthcare costs. It was never intended to replace your doctor. We have seen what happened with attempted driverless cars, it failed big times!

Supporting travel services with technology via Digital medicine and wellness services can help reach remote and under-served areas due to the remarkable growth of Wireless Technology with cell phones, GPS, WIFI, and tablet computers. These computers will be connected via Networks which will allow sharing of hardware and software data. The data will follow either path of high bandwidth or low bandwidth being wired or wireless. For example, hospitals use fast T1 lines for moving images and also use slow connections for e-mail service. Basic input devices are required including pointing devices like Mouse, microphones, and cameras along with scanning devices such as bar-code readers, magnetic ink character recognition or optical character recognition, or radio frequency identification tags. Telemedicine would be great for those who prefer quick convenient service without taking time off work and driving down to a doctor's office Urgent Care or even the Emergency Room to sit and wait for a long time to be seen and get hit with a big bill to pay!

  • Consumers are reminded to be careful about the authenticity of information and conflict of interest on any website before using a specific site whether educational or commercial. Interoperability is critical in making telemedicine meaningful and effective in improving health outcomes and saving costs which is the ultimate goal to be achieved. Consumers insist on second opinions, especially with travelling for Medical or Wellness Tourism!

It is very important to help our patients who entrusted us with their Health to educate them about their disease condition, how to treat it, and prevent its recurrence or progression. A second opinion will help to confirm or deny the previously made diagnosis. A second opinion will also help explain to guests the various therapeutic options for the best clinical outcome. It is very easy for patients to get confused by information overload if they try to navigate through a complicated process to come up with decisions that best serve their health interests. A second opinion is mostly needed in the case of elderly patients living in rural areas who typically do not have a high level of sophistication to understand the entire process but need very simple explanations in easy language to understand by avoiding all complex medical terminology that patients do not know.

For example, a client should seek a second opinion doing a major surgery such as coronary artery bypass surgery or other surgeries or treatments.

So, the time to seek a second opinion is when the diagnosis is not certain, or the treatment is risky or controversial. Also, when the trust in the care given by the treating doctor or the facility is lost. Either the patient or their doctors should start searching online or via social media for honestly trained, fully credentialed physicians in the same specialty to seek a second opinion when guests request a second opinion and patients should not feel as if they are cheating on their doctors when they go for second opinion. According to a study done at Mayo Clinic, 88% of patients seeking second opinion ended up with either a change or modification of their treatment plan!

The value of a second opinion is recognized by healthcare insurance companies that pay for it and insist on a second opinion before starting any treatment. To confirm diagnosis, and choice of therapy, alleviate guest and families concerns, and ensure appropriate choice of treatment is selected and concurred by the treating team. If the second opinion is not properly done, then all subsequent steps in the care plan will be negatively impacted and then you must start all over again with additional mostly preventable costs and stress to patients and their families!

The need for a second opinion for medical tourism patients is even more critical because of added challenges includes patients going to travel to far places from home to seek medical care for affordability and accessibility in different languages and environments. Hence, all due diligence should be done before traveling (measure twice then cut once!). There are additional factors beyond the good, advertised prices which include for example the reputation of the institution, level of training and clinical experience of the treating physician and successful procedures as well as complication rates.

Moreover, we must advocate for patients to explore legal pathways in case of an adverse event or a complication taking place to give the guests an additional layer of security, comfort, and peace of mind.

It all starts with meticulous planning to maximize the success of the Medical and Wellness Travel experience and boost customer satisfaction and confidence in the quality of services provided by honest, well-trained specialists to contact and contract for medical tourism services. Floridamedicaltourism.com is here to help and serve all medical and wellness tourism needs including honest second opinions for inbound, outbound, and domestic clients globally!

References:

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  2. Lassale C, Batty GD, Baghdadli A, et al. Healthy dietary indices and risk of depressive outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. Mol Psychiatry 2019;24:965-86. 10.1038/s41380-018-0237-8
  3. Gangwisch JE, Hale L, Garcia L, et al. High glycemic index diet as a risk factor for depression: analyses from the Women’s Health Initiative. Am J Clin Nutr 2015;102:454-63. 10.3945/ajcn.114.103846
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  5. Kastorini C-M, Milionis HJ, Esposito K, Giugliano D, Goudevenos JA, Panagiotakos DB. The effect of Mediterranean diet on metabolic syndrome and its components: a meta-analysis of 50 studies and 534 906 individuals. J Am Coll Cardiol 2011;57:1299-313. 10.1016/j.jacc.2010.09.073
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  7. Yuan N, Chen Y, Xia Y, Dai J, Liu C. Inflammation-related biomarkers in major psychiatric disorders: a cross-disorder assessment of reproducibility and specificity in 43 meta-analyses. Transl Psychiatry 2019;9:233. 10.1038/s41398-019-0570-y
  8. Firth J, Stubbs B, Teasdale SB, et al. Diet as a hot topic in psychiatry: a population-scale study of nutritional intake and inflammatory potential in severe mental illness. World Psychiatry 2018;17:365-7. 10.1002/wps.20571
  9. Ghosh TS, Rampelli S, Jeffery IB, et al. Mediterranean diet intervention alters the gut microbiome in older people reducing frailty and improving health status: the NU-AGE 1-year dietary intervention across five European countries. Gut 2020;69:1218-28. 10.1136/gutjnl-2019-319654
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Dr. Adel Eldin
ProntoCare