A recent case study published in Telemedicine and e-Health has pinpointed six key dimensions that should be incorporated into any framework used to evaluate telehealth programs.
The dimensions identified in the study were as follows:
1. Socioeconomic aspects. Costs, benefits, barriers and outcomes are among the integral socioeconomic factors at play in telehealth implementation and are an important part of the framework for evaluating telehealth programs.
2. Health domain. Each health domain, such as oncology, neurology and dermatology, requires its own specific information, which makes the health domain an integral part of telehealth implementation.
3. Health services. Clinical diagnosis, consultation, case review and nonclinical applications require differing communication and technology, which makes the type of health services provided extremely important for evaluating a telehealth program.
4. Telehealth technologies. The type of technology being used, such as store-and-forward/asynchronous and real-time/synchronous, needs to be given consideration in a telehealth evaluation framework in order to capture the full breadth of telehealth and for telehealth implementation.
5. Communication technologies. From traditional phone lines to high-speed broadband networks, the communication technologies utilized in telehealth are an important dimension to the framework because communication technologies are important to consider when designing a telehealth program. It helps determine what can be done based on the available communication technology.
6. Environment settings. This is an important part of the framework, as different environment settings will call for varying devices and varying modes of communication in telehealth implementation.
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