Examples of Research Outcomes Telemedicine’s Impact on Healthcare Cost and Quality

Over 40 years of research has yielded a wealth of data about the cost effectiveness and efficacy of many telemedicine applications. PubMed a bibliographic database of medical research that is maintained by the National Library of Medicine includes over 12,000 citations of published works related to telemedicine or telehealth. Over 2,000 evaluative studies related to telemedicine have been published in two journals devoted to telemedicine alone. The summaries that appear highlight the results from a few of the studies that have evaluated the cost effectiveness, quality of care and patient acceptance of telemedicine. In addition, leading, validated studies have been identified by many of the ATA Member Groups. These are summarized at the end of this paper.