title: Telehealthcare for asthma: a Cochrane review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Telehealthcare has the potential to provide care for long-term conditions that are increasingly prevalent, such as asthma. We conducted a systematic review of studies of telehealthcare interventions used for the treatment of asthma to determine whether such approaches to care are effective.
  
  
  METHODS
  We searched the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register of Trials, which is derived from systematic searches of bibliographic databases including CENTRAL (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) and PsycINFO, as well as other electronic resources. We also searched registers of ongoing and unpublished trials. We were interested in studies that measured the following outcomes: quality of life, number of visits to the emergency department and number of admissions to hospital. Two reviewers identified studies for inclusion in our meta-analysis. We extracted data and used fixedeffect modelling for the meta-analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified 21 randomized controlled trials for inclusion in our analysis. The methods of telehealthcare intervention these studies investigated were the telephone and video- and Internet-based models of care. Meta-analysis did not show a clinically important improvement in patients' quality of life, and there was no significant change in the number of visits to the emergency department over 12 months. There was a significant reduction in the number of patients admitted to hospital once or more over 12 months (risk ratio 0.25 [95% confidence interval 0.09 to 0.66]).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found no evidence of a clinically important impact on patients' quality of life, but telehealthcare interventions do appear to have the potential to reduce the risk of admission to hospital, particularly for patients with severe asthma. Further research is required to clarify the cost-effectiveness of models of care based on telehealthcare.
authors: Allergy and Respiratory Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
authors: Susannah
authors: S
authors: McLean
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Chandler
authors: Ulugbek
authors: U
authors: Nurmatov
authors: Joseph
authors: J
authors: Liu
authors: Claudia
authors: C
authors: Pagliari
authors: Josip
authors: J
authors: Car
authors: Aziz
authors: A
authors: Sheikh
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma / Q000628:therapy*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010359:Patient Readmission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011788:Quality of Life; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D017216:Telemedicine