Results from Telehealth

Telemedicine and telehealth have a wide range of definitions and understanding. Telehealth has been described as taking many forms and having many terms to describe its activities such as; home health care, telecare, tele-dermatology, tele-psychiatry, tele-radiology, telemonitoring, and remote patient monitoring. In general, the purpose of telehealth is to acquire information on a patient in one location, make that information available in a separate location, usually for the convenience of the clinician, and then use that information to provide management to a patient, who may be in a further location, through the mediation of a remote clinician, or directly to the patient. Typically this has taken the form of the patient being in their own home or at a clinical establishment remote from the hospital such as the district hospital, remote clinic, and primary care, with clinical information being collected and transferred using technology between locations. This chapter focuses on results from telehealth in the form of remote patient monitoring (RPM), in which data is collected from the patient whilst they are in their own home, or other non-clinical setting such as residential care.