Evidence of benefit from telemental health applications : Evidence of benefits from telemental health applications : a systematic review

The aims of the project were to obtain a description of the current evidence available on the effectiveness and costs of TMH services; to summarize published information on the use of TMH services in routine practice; to obtain information on use of TMH services in Canada and Finland; and to provide commentary on the implications of the available evidence and usage data for decision makers. [...] The review presented in this report follows a pattern of appraisal that was established in preparing a report on telemedicine for the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment2 and which has been continued in subsequent assessments.3,4 TMH studies reviewed in those reports had shown evidence of improved outcomes through use of telephone-based nurse care and of savings to t [...] The search strategy is described in Appendix A. Searches were also made of the ACP Journal Club, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and the Cochrane Controlled Clinical Trials Register (CENTRAL). [...] This approach has been used in previous reviews of the telehealth literature, and in a review of the use of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) for the estimation of healthcare effectiveness.3,4,10,11 For study performance, five areas of interest were considered, as shown in Table 1. When reviewing an article on a TMH study, each of these five areas was given a score of 0, 1, or 2, based on the fo [...] On the basis of the combined scores, we assigned each study to one of five categories to give an indication of the reliability of the findings that the study reported.