title: [Can the new technologies of telemedicine applied to health help the caregiver?].
abstract: During the last few years about the chronic patient assistance the tendency is to privilege the home care model, favouring the permanence of the patient in the familiar nucleus. This determines an always greater involvement in term of time and responsibility of the caregiver that is of the person who takes cure of the patient one worrying itself to answer to its physical needs, psychical and social. The burden of the family caregiver is in the consisting majority of the cases rather. The caregiver is therefore, with full rights, the other protagonist of the disease and it must be necessarily integrated in the assistance plan. The increase of the age associated to an increase of the prevalence of chronic pathologies, determines the necessity to plan new interventions on the territory. In chronic patients alternative assistance models, using telemedicine, seem to be effectives improving both clinical aspects and quality of the life. A new area of interest is delineated therefore that, through the new technologies of the ICT must define been involved the single roles of the operating ones in the participation program. The telemedicine seems to be a useful instrument in order to support patient and caregiver in facing the disease and reducing stress. In our model of domiciliary telesurveillance the patient, the caregiver, the family and all the sanitary figures are been involved. This model integrating the service dedicated to chronic pathology with telepsychology at home seems to give good result even if ulterior studies, above all in the long term, are need.
authors.affiliation: Servizio Autonomo di Telemedicina, IRCCS Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri, Lumezzane, BS, Italy.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bernocchi
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Comini
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rocchi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bruletti
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Scalvini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D018907:Privacy; D011788:Quality of Life; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000517:prevention & control; D017216:Telemedicine