Standards and Guidelines in Telemedicine and Telehealth

Abstract

The development of guidelines and standards for telemedicine is an important and valuable process to help insure effective and safe delivery of quality healthcare. Some organizations, such as the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), have made the development of standards and guidelines a priority. The practice guidelines developed so far have been well received by the telemedicine community and are being adopted in numerous practices, as well as being used in research to support the practice and growth of telemedicine. Studies that utilize published guidelines not only help bring them into greater public awareness, but they also provide evidence needed to validate existing guidelines and guide the revision of future versions. Telemedicine will continue to grow and be adopted by more healthcare practitioners and patients in a wide variety of forms not just in the traditional clinical environments, and practice guidelines will be a key factor in fostering this growth. Creation of guidelines is important to payers and regulators as well as increasingly they are adopting and integrating them into regulations and policies. This paper will review some of the recent ATA efforts in developing telemedicine practice guidelines, review the role of research in guidelines development, review data regarding their use, and discuss some of areas where guidelines are still needed.

Keywords: guidelines; practice; research; standards; telemedicine.

Figure 1

Schematic of the ATA Guidelines development process.

Figure 2

Box plots of the ratings (high score = positive) guidelines developers gave when asked about how well the “think tank” session process went. Effort Acc = effort was acceptable; Ben Eff = they benefitted from the effort; Less Hassle = the process was less of a hassle than expected; No Reg = no regrets.

Figure 3

Box plots of the ratings (high score = positive) guidelines developers gave when asked about goals attainment through the “think tank” session. Got more = got more from the session than expected; Benef More = benefitted more from the session than expected; More Good = there was more good derived than expected; Gain More = gained more from the experience than expected.

Figure 4

Survey responses to why telemedicine should have guidelines. Responders could provide more than one response.

Figure 5

Survey responses regarding top uses of guidelines. Responders could select more than one response.

Figure 6

Survey responses as to whose guidelines are typically used. Responders could select more than one response.