Recent Directions in Telemedicine: Review of Trends in Research and Practice.

OBJECTIVES: Healthcare is now routinely delivered by telecommunications-based services in all developed countries and an increasing number of developing countries. Telemedicine is used in many clinical specialities and across numerous healthcare settings, which range from mobile patient-centric applications to complex interactions amongst clinicians in tertiary referral hospital settings. This paper discusses some recent areas of significant development and progress in the field with the purpose of identifying strong trends in both research and practice activities. METHODS: To establish the breadth of new ideas and directions in the field, a review of literature was made by searching PubMed for recent publications including terms (telemedicine OR telehealth) AND (challenge OR direction OR innovation OR new OR novel OR trend), for all searchable categories. 3,433 publications were identified that have appeared since January 1, 2005 (2,172 of these since January 1, 2010), based on a search conducted on June 1, 2015. RESULTS: The current interest areas in these papers span both synchronous telemedicine, including intensive care, emergency medicine, and mental health, and asynchronous telemedicine, including wound and burns care, dermatology and ophthalmology. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that two major drivers of contemporary tele medicine development are a high volume demand for a particular clinical service, and/or a high criticality of need for clinical exper tise to deliver the service. These areas offer promise for further study and enhancement of applicable telemedicine methods and have the potential for large-scale deployments internationally, which would contribute significantly to the advancement of healthcare.

Telehealth trends and the challenge for infrastructure.

BACKGROUND: As telehealth takes advantage of improved networks, there is a growing need to understand the infrastructure needs of future telehealth developments. This work aims to predict such needs based on current trends and research. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a literature review of telehealth with a focus on advanced network infrastructure. We drew inferences from our previous demonstrator projects in advanced telehealth, but the most important findings emerged from interviews with a panel of thought leaders. RESULTS: Our results show that there will be simultaneous and coupled evolution of telehealth through the space spanned by three axes: care models, clinical applications, and technology. We also consider a two-dimensional model of reach and complexity to describe future applications. Universal access to advanced networks will drive fundamental changes in healthcare deliver. The biggest change will be seen in home and mobile health care delivery, forming part of a trend toward patient-centric models. Other aspects of decentralization in healthcare systems will include networks of caregivers. Besides this reach trend, the complexity trend will include integrating multiple-channel applications and seamlessly moving large datasets in real time among hospitals, other medical facilities, and homes. There is a need to provide infrastructure that does not have an upper limit on quality of service and allows telehealth to address mobility, usability, interoperability, intelligence, and adaptability in a systematic way.

Telehealth on advanced networks.

We address advanced Internet for complex telehealth applications by reviewing four hospital-based broadband telehealth projects and identifying common threads. These projects were conducted in Australia under a 6-year research project on broadband Internet applications. Each project addressed specific clinical needs and its development was guided by the clinicians involved. Each project was trialed in the field and evaluated against the initial requirements. The four projects covered remote management of a resuscitation team in a district hospital, remote guidance and interpretation of echocardiography, virtual-reality-based instructor-student surgical training, and postoperative outpatient consultations following pediatric surgery. Each was characterized by a high level of interpersonal communication, a high level of clinical expertise, and multiple participants. Each made use of multiple high-quality video and audio links and shared real-time access to clinical data. Four common threads were observed. Each application provided a high level of usability and task focus because the design and use of broadband capability was aimed directly to meet the clinicians' needs. Each used the media quality available over broadband to convey words, gestures, body movements, and facial expressions to support communication and a sense of presence among the participants. Each required a complex information space shared among the participants, including real-time access to stored patient data and real-time interactive access to the patients themselves. Finally, each application supported the social and organizational aspects of their healthcare focus, creating and maintaining relationships between the various participants, and this was done by placing the telehealth application into a wider functioning clinical context. These findings provide evidence for a significantly enhanced role for appropriate telemedicine systems running on advanced networks, in a wider range of clinical applications, more deeply integrated into healthcare systems.

Technologies for complex and critical care telemedicine.

While telemedicine is now well established in many areas of medical practice, it is only beginning to create impact in some of the more complex medical applications such as critical care. New systems based on advanced technologies such as the Virtual Critical Care Unit and the eICU have recently successfully demonstrated the provision of critical care services from a distance in emergency and intensive care respectively. These specialties make particular demands on a telemedicine system, and studies in computer supported collaborative work as well as studies of work practices suggest that there is a minimum threshold of technology complexity for supporting such applications. The eICU relies mainly on transmitting a rich data space to a remotely located specialist, while ViCCU relies on creating a sense of presence. Other systems rely on complex physiological models. These approaches exemplify two trends in telemedicine systems of the future, with enhanced immersiveness creating a high sense of presence, and ready access to structured patient-specific data providing assistance to decision support. The future of telemedicine technology may see a convergence of these two trends.

Development of a broadband telehealth system for critical care: process and lessons learned.

A broadband telehealth system has been developed for supporting critical care services between a major referral hospital and a rural hospital by transmitting very high-quality, realtime multimedia information, including images, audio and real-time video, over an Internet Protocol (IP)-based network. The technical design team took an iterative and user-centred approach toward the system design. Usability tests with scenario analysis were incorporated into the development process to produce a system that operates seamlessly in the critical care environment. Careful analysis of the reliability of the system was incorporated into the clinical protocols for integration into existing work practices. The use of high-quality multimedia data, consideration of human factors early in the design process, and incorporation of proper development approaches were critical for the success of the system design.