Tulu Bengisu, Chatterjee Samir, Maheshwari Megha
Department of Management, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-2280, USA.
Telemed J E Health. 2007 Jun;13(3):349-58. doi: 10.1089/tmj.2006.0055.
Telemedicine allows medical doctors and specialized skilled experts to provide services to patients who are in remote locations using advanced telecommunications. This paper presents a taxonomy that systematically classifies various telemedicine efforts worldwide using five major dimensions: application purpose, application area, environmental setting, communication infrastructure, and delivery options. To identify relationships and patterns between these different dimensions telemedicine programs survey data from the Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE) was analyzed using multiple regression and path analysis. Major findings indicate that interactive video is the most preferred modality. Store-and-forward technology is preferred for ophthalmology, radiology, and pathology. However, a negative correlation exists between store-and-forward and interactive video with mental health application. The study also indicates that the Internet is still not the dominant communications infrastructure when it comes to telemedicine. We showed that these dimensions can capture almost all efforts in telemedicine and also help program planners to understand the issues in telemedicine deployment. Our findings indicate that the taxonomy is useful for categorizing and comparing existing programs, and can be used for planning future programs.
远程医疗使医生和专业技术专家能够利用先进的电信技术为身处偏远地区的患者提供服务。本文提出了一种分类法，该分类法使用五个主要维度对全球范围内的各种远程医疗工作进行系统分类：应用目的、应用领域、环境设置、通信基础设施和交付方式。为了确定这些不同维度之间的关系和模式，使用多元回归和路径分析对来自远程医疗信息交换（TIE）的远程医疗项目调查数据进行了分析。主要研究结果表明，交互式视频是最受欢迎的方式。存储转发技术在眼科、放射科和病理学领域更受青睐。然而，存储转发与交互式视频在心理健康应用方面存在负相关。该研究还表明，在远程医疗方面，互联网仍然不是主导的通信基础设施。我们表明，这些维度几乎可以涵盖远程医疗的所有工作，还能帮助项目规划者理解远程医疗部署中的问题。我们的研究结果表明，该分类法有助于对现有项目进行分类和比较，并可用于规划未来的项目。
