A SURVEY OF RESEARCH IN TELEMEDICINE - 2 - TELEMEDICINE SERVICES

This article deals with research which attempts to demonstrate the val ue of health care delivered via telemedicine. A great variety of telem edicine services have been proposed. Much of the published work concen trates on the power of the technology and the content and quality of i nteraction it supports. There are other parameters to be considered in assessing telemedicine as a component of a health-care system, parame ters which in practice determine the nature of the service being provi ded. Despite the fact that much work in telemedicine is published as s hort accounts of pilot projects, there is little research that explici tly addresses the difficulties involved in setting up new telemedicine services. Some studies have been performed which attempt to evaluate telemedicine services, but relatively few studies have been able to co llect the data required to provide an unambiguous demonstration of the ir value.