Strengthening Community Health Services Delivery: Telehealth

摘要

With the escalating cost of hospitalization, more patients are being cared for in the community. Health promotion and protection have become a major agenda in health care. The Telehealth system described in this paper was developed in this context. The system aims to take health services directly to people in the community. It is an outcome of a university-hospital-community partnership project. With the broadband network, a community health centre in an island is linked with the university. Conceptually, there are three components in the Telehealth system, namely the Telehealth Clinic, Web-based Info Centre and Health Statistics Centre. The Telehealth Clinic is the nucleus of the whole system. Through the system, people are assessed, treated, advised or referred to other health care practitioners. The health data collected forms the database of the Health Statistics Centre and based on this data, nursing interventions including the use of the Web-based Info Centre are offered. The interactions and transactions between nurses and their clients in the Telehealth system differ from the conventional system. It is therefore important and timely to consider the regulatory, legislative, economic and political implications of Telehealth.