Evidence briefing on teleconsultation
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
Record ID 32014001364
English
Authors' recommendations:
Telemedicine, telehealth and various other terms are used (often interchangeably) to describe the use of a range of communication and information technologies that aim to provide health care at a distance.
The Department of Health through its 3millionlives initiative has signalled its intent to accelerate the roll-out of telehealth (and telecare) to people with long term conditions and complex care needs in the NHS and social care.
The NHS Yorkshire and the Humber led Telehealth Hub is making a range of telemedicine services available to commissioners and providers across the region.
The focus of this briefing is teleconsultation (two way communication between clinicians and patients, or between clinicians) with particular reference to patients with long term chronic conditions (COPD and diabetes) and/ or in nursing home or long term care settings.
Despite the existence of a large number of systematic reviews, overviews of reviews and economic evaluations in the field of telemedicine, there is little robust evidence for the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of teleconsultation.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but without evidence of benefit it is difficult to justify a wider deployment of teleconsultation as a service.
While various NHS organisations have implemented telemedicine interventions on a small scale, there appear to be substantial barriers to large-scale implementation.
The need to demonstrate clinical and cost-effectiveness suggests the possibility of further evaluating the service in the context of an appropriately designed programme of evidence development.
Details
Project Status:
Completed
Year Published:
2012
URL for published report:
http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/pdf/Teleconsultation.pdf
English language abstract:
An English language summary is available
Publication Type:
Not Assigned
Country:
England
Contact
Organisation Name:
University of York
Contact Address:
University of York, York, Y01 5DD, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1904 321040, Fax: +44 1904 321041,
Contact Name:
crd@york.ac.uk
Contact Email:
crd@york.ac.uk
Copyright:
University of York
This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA or other HTA producer. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database.