The potential for telemedicine in home nursing.
We assessed the proportion of home nursing visits that could be replaced by home telenursing in the UK. A retrospective review of nursing notes in the UK was undertaken using an abstraction instrument developed and tested in the US. A total of 1951 episodes of patient care at home were reviewed: 1450 from Liverpool and 501 from Belfast. A total of 1626 (83%) of the episodes involved 'hands-on' interventions. In Belfast two observers estimated that 14% of home nursing visits could be done via telemedicine while in Liverpool two more observers gave an estimate of 16%. Inter-rater agreement was high (kappa = 0.93 for the Belfast observers and 0.79 for the Liverpool observers). Pilot trials of an analogue video-phone in Belfast suggested that even relatively low-quality compressed video might be useful for home nursing. These findings suggest that telemedicine may have a significant role in the delivery of home health care in the UK.
Wootton
R
R
Institute of Telemedicine and Telecare, Queen's University, Belfast, UK. R.Wootton@qub.ac.uk
Loane
M
M
Mair
F
F
Moutray
M
M
Harrisson
S
S
Sivananthan
S
S
Allen
A
A
Doolittle
G
G
McLernan
A
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003625:Data Collection; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009660:Northern Ireland; D010865:Pilot Projects; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods*; D013686:Telemetry / Q000379:methods; D013689:Telephone