An economic analysis of email-based telemedicine: a cost minimisation study of two service models.
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Date
2008-06-06
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Abstract
Email based telemedicine has been reported to be an efficient method of delivering online health services to patients at a distance and is often described as a low cost form of telemedicine The service may be low cost if the healthcare organisation utilise their existing email infrastructure to provide their telemedicine service Many healthcare organisations use commercial off the shelf COTS email applications COTS email applications are designed for peer to peer communication hence in situations where multiple clinicians need to be involved COTS applications may be deficient in delivering telemedicine Larger services often rely on different staff disciplines to run their service and telemedicine tools for supervisors clinicians and administrative staff are not available in COTS applications Hence some organisations may choose to develop a purpose written email application to support telemedicine We have conducted a cost minimisation analysis of two different service models for establishing and operating an email service The first service model used a COTS email application and the second used a purpose written telemedicine application