THESIS

Thesis

Abstract

Despite the great promise that telehealth holds for improving cost, quality and access, there is currently a disjunction between what we know about telehealth and system growth and performance. To better understand the relationship between these two facets of telehealth development, this paper examines trends in telehealth, both as an intellectual endeavor and as a practical means of providing health services. Although there are promising avenues for government intervention in the way of coordination, funding, and regulatory practice, lack of knowledge regarding what works and what does not work has served as a major impediment to further progress in this area. In the absence of solid empirical evidence, key decision makers entertain doubts about telehealth's effectiveness, which, in turn, limits public leadership, private investment, and the long-term integration of telehealth into the health and technological mainstream. Solving the disjuncture between research and practice will require additional clinical trials and evaluation studies that examine the efficacy of various technologies, both relative to each other and to conventional in person medical encounters. At the same time, it will require more even distribution of research across applications, service locations, regions, and nations. But the generation of additional high-quality empirical data on process, benefits, costs, and effects is only the beginning. That data must in turn be used to effectuate change. This will require researchers to take a more proactive stance in promoting use of their findings, both instrumentally, to adjust, modify or improve particular programs or policies, and conceptually, to influence how key stakeholders think about telehealth more generally.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I:

Abstract1

TABLE OF CONTENTS3

CHAPTER I5

INTRODUCTION5

Introduction5

Problem Statement6

Importance of Study7

Aim of Study8

Knowledge Gap8

BACKGROUND10

Current Research10

Research Question12

Intended Research Project13

CHAPTER III14

METHODOLOGY14

Chapter IV: Results18

Introduction or Overview18

Important highlights19

Specific findings21

Summary25

Chapter V: Conclusion31

Overview of significant findings31

Consideration of findings in context of current knowledge33

Chapter VI: Discussion37

Limitations of the study37

Recommendations for further research40

References47

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

The growth of the Internet has sparked methods of healthcare delivery that are less constrained by geography, nationality, or institutional boundaries. This has resulted in some aspects of the healthcare shifting from medical centers to homes and communities in the form of telehealth and telemedicine (Kaplan & Litewka, 2008). Telemedicine is a subset of telemedicine and includes medical specialties such as teleradiology, teledermatology, telepsychiatry, and so on (ANA, 1997).

Ross (1999) offered the following definitions of privacy, confidentiality, and security:

Privacy is ensuring that individuals maintain the right to control what information is collected about them, how it is used, who has used it, who maintains it, and what purpose it is used for. Confidentiality is ensuring that information is not accessed by unauthorized persons. Security is the ability of a system to protect information and system resources with respect to confidentiality and integrity (¶12).

High-quality data security and integrity are important in numerous industries and environments, and the telehealth industry is no exception. The telehealth industry generates massive amounts of patient information (Waldo, 2003). Some of this information is used for statistics and formulas. The proliferation of computers and the use of the Internet have created significant risks of ...