Upsurge in new Telehealth services requires thorough evaluation of their effectiveness

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Experts argue for adopting inclusive and structured evaluation approaches.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted rapid and widespread increase in use of telehealth and associated ehealth services, in Australia and internationally.

This unprecedented growth has transformed the way in which many healthcareservices are delivered, almost overnight, with immediate positive effects and cost effectiveness.

But there is some danger that the ad hoc adoption of these technology-based innovations may result in them being short-lived and later discarded, due to their narrow impact and lack of integration with existing ‘infostructure’.

“Changes in care delivery processes and mechanisms have been very widespread, from primary to acute care,” said Australasian Telehealth Society National President Jackie Plunkett.

“We need to learn from this experience, and ensure we have enough flexibility and resilience in our health systems to enable changes like this to happen safely and sustainably, into the future.”

Society Vice-President Alan Taylor has recently initiated a major national survey to capture some of this knowledge on the adoption of Telehealth services in response to the pandemic.

“We can see that there has been a much wider use of telehealth, in many different settings, than simply the adoption of telephone consultations which have captured so much public attention,” he said.

Mr Taylor has also conducted an in-depth examination of digital health innovations in the aged care sector, which have occurred in response to COVID-19 pandemic needs.

“In addition to teleconsultation, we found many instances of new services in remote patient monitoring, independent living support, and health related communications during isolation,” he added.

While the multiplicity of new services is a bonanza for the digital health market, it brings with it an unmet need for considering how to join up and sustain these many independent initiatives.

Professor Anthony Maeder, co-Director of the Flinders Digital Health Research Centre, commented on this aspect: “It is as important to follow up with critique and evaluation of new telehealth and ehealth services, as it is to develop the new services in the first place.”

The Centre has recently developed a universal framework for this purpose. “It is essential that we adopt an inclusive 360-degree process,” says Prof Maeder, “with input on clinical processes, health system components, broader stakeholder impacts, and the technology business environment.”

The framework has already been applied to analyse examples of new COVID-19 telehealth consultation services, and COVID-19 mobile phone tracking apps.

“Only with a systematic and comprehensive structured approach such as we have suggested, can the impact and potential of these new digital technology enabled health services be fully evaluated,” said Prof Maeder.

The Australasian Telehealth Society is committed to providing a united ‘voice’ for telehealth advancement covering a broad range of domains including the health sector, academic institutions, government and industry partners.

“Moving the boundaries of Telehealth to bring health care practices into the 21st Century is the opportunity before us,” says the Society’s president Jackie Plunkett.

Source: Australasian Telehealth Society media release, 14 July 2020

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