E-health: the medical care of the future

A doctor's consultation at a distance

Is e-health simply a doctor's consultation but via a webcam? Of course the answer is no. Strictly speaking, e-health is an entirely new branch of sport, where your personal health becomes a part of your online world. That sounds a bit heavy, but you probably know the various mobile apps that already encourage you to live a healthy life and take 10,000 steps a day. Add to that the interaction with actual experts in health and medicine and you start to get a picture of e-health.

Get rid of the thresholds

Through a company like Vitalmindz you can come into contact with various medical experts through various programmes, each with its own spearhead. This gives you control over your own health, specifically in the domain that you find important. Think of overcoming fears, dealing with stress or overcoming depression. All this, of course, from the comfort of your own home.

In many cases, e-health focuses on mental health. After all, you cannot get away with a remote consultation with a broken leg. But there is another important reason why e-health is so good in mental health care. The threshold for contacting a medical specialist via an e-health program is considerably lower, especially at the mental level than via a regular GP visit. Many people already have a more or less personal relationship with their GP and experience it as a taboo to talk about things like depression or stress. E-health makes it easier to break such a taboo and puts you in touch with a specialist who can help you more easily.

At the right time in the right place

A second advantage of e-health is of course being able to receive help and support when it suits you best, in the place that suits you best. You no longer have to change your daily schedule because the visit to the specialist is scheduled for half past eleven in the morning.

Innovative and preventive

Because of this lowering of the threshold and flexibility, you see an innovative medical offer emerging from providers such as Vitalmindz. Many of the programs on offer have a preventive character: for example, how do you deal with stress at work in a healthy way, so that you prevent burnout? Applications such as VR glasses (with which stressful or frightening situations can be simulated) are also possible.

Virtual reality therapy

What gives you stress? What would it be like to get a grip on this step by step? That is the premise of stress jam, a serious game that uses virtual reality. Anyone who has ever worn VR glasses knows how fast you experience the virtual environment. You put on the VR glasses and the sensors measure your stress level in your body. You play the game and learn to deal with stress consciously. You can see what works for you while being guided by a coach. Back in real life, you notice that you can handle your stress much better.

E-health thus opens the doors to the medical care of the future. This mainly involves being in control of your own (mental) health and responding in a timely manner to possible needs that you experience. You don't have to feel like a patient, but rather someone who is simply working with his vitality in a well-considered, healthy way.