Medical models of teleoncology: current status and future directions

Abstract

Teleoncology has been adopted by many centers to provide cancer care closer to home for rural, remote, Indigenous and other disadvantaged people of our communities. A variety of medical models of teleoncology exist to provide various medical oncology services. While most centers use teleoncology to complement their face-to-face outreach services, some centers have replaced face-to-face with teleoncology models. Selection of patients and scheduling of clinics would depend on various factors including experience of the clinicians, complexity of treatment provided, capabilities and workforce of rural sites, and patient preferences. Many small studies reported high satisfaction rates of these models among patients and health professionals including Indigenous populations. One single center study reports that it is safe to supervise chemotherapy delivery remotely and many studies report cost savings to the health systems. Further studies on safety aspects of teleoncology are needed to further improve the current models. Future teleoncology models would need to include Web-based models, mobile technologies and remote chemotherapy supervision models so that patients from most rural towns could have at least some of their cancer care closer to home.

Keywords: cancer; model of care; rural; telehealth; telemedicine.