title: Virtualizing healthcare: competing visions.
abstract: Telehealth technologies show tremendous promise in helping reduce health care costs by bridging distance and time. However, neither of the two competing visions for how telehealth should be used is scalable. On the one hand, remote telehealth care providers who triage or monitor patients, are not integrated into the health care system. They are outsiders, lacking access to the records of patients. On the other hand, face-to-face providers who provide the bulk of care in the health care system, are increasingly being asked to keep track of remote monitoring data and to manage patients remotely. They are insiders, but lack the time or training to manage patients remotely. In this paper, we propose a third way: integrate telehealth care providers into the primary care team as a virtual team. Being virtual, they can provide complementary services that patients need, but are not getting, such as peak and off hours care, off hours disease management advice, between-visit support and follow-up and remote device monitoring. We also describe the design requirements, issues and solutions for integrating telehealth technology into electronic medical record systems.
authors: InfoClin Inc, Toronto, ON.
authors: Karim
authors: K
authors: Keshavjee
authors: InfoClin Inc, Toronto, ON.
authors: Don
authors: D
authors: Lajoie
authors: Sykes Assistance Services, London, ON.
authors: Jim
authors: J
authors: Murphy
mesh_terms: D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000379:methods*; D017146:Models, Organizational; D010347:Patient Care Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D018511:Systems Integration; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014584:User-Computer Interface