Home telehealth for chronic disease management

The issues include the improvement and maintenance of patients’ quality of life (QoL) and health status, the avoidance of unnecessary trips to emergency departments, a reduction in hospital readmissions, and a reduction of costs. [...] Objective The aim of this review was to systematically evaluate the clinical benefit and to review the cost- effectiveness of home telehealth versus usual care or no care for the management of diabetes, heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). [...] Other chronic diseases that could be managed by using home telehealth; the criteria and tools that are used to identify eligible patients; the strategies for the integration of home telehealth into the Canadian health care system; the technologies that are available in Canada; the health care resource implications; the risk management frameworks; and the ethical, legal, and psychosocial issues wer [...] The evidence suggests that home telehealth generally provides improved access to care, improves the patient’s medical condition and QoL, and reduces costs compared with conventional home care or usual care.8-10 Home telehealth is telehealth that brings health care delivery to the home by connecting the patient and the professional. [...] The count data (for example, the number of hospitalizations) were summarized as rate ratios [ratio of the rate in the experimental intervention group (for example, home telemonitoring or telephone support) to the rate in the control group (for example, usual care)] to measure the number of events that occurred per patient and to account for the varying lengths of follow-up.