Telecare Service Applied to Workplace Health Promotion

Telecare-service has been promoted and used recently in Taiwan. Its applications were not only applied in general industry, but also covered the health care one. Based on the subsidy from the relevant government agencies, the telecare service for patients with stroke or diabetes and other chronic diseases. The initial results of implementation have been remarkable gradually.

Siaogang Hospital plays important role of workplace health service in Southern Taiwan. According to the domestic law, the workplace employees have no special requirements prior to the physical condition of the daily assessment, in addition to routine annual health check. Consequently, it will be not easy for the employees to detect physical conditions in different situations.

The project has been executed from 2010, and 16 factories enrolled; moreover, workplace employees’physiological data including blood pressure, pulse, and blood sugar were collected through healthcare-box to the “Healthcare Call Center” via a network or wireless transmission technology. The center provides 24-hour monitoring and emergency treatment of abnormal data, and medical consultation as well. The average measurement rate of employees was 50.34%.

225 questionnaires were delivered to the employees and there were 149 responders. The demographic data showed that 65.3% were male, 46% were aged 45-64 years, 31-45 years of age to 39.5%. With regard to “tracking and monitoring of health status”, it demonstrated the higher service satisfaction with 78.4%, and the higher satisfaction of“emergency medical treatment and medical consultation”also reached to 73.3%. As to “arrangement back to clinic”, only 51.8% of responders were satisfied. There are 33.3% participator with abnormal datas were taking further treatment. 

To sum up, it is still positive to have telecare applied to workplace health promotion or disease prevention, although the part of this project is in the low rate of measurement revealing the new health care model not yet widely accepted; herefore, how to increase employee participation in health promotion is incentive to continue.