An economic analysis of email-based telemedicine: A cost minimisation study of two service models

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Email-based telemedicine has been reported to be an efficient method of delivering online health services to patients at a distance and is often described as a low-cost form of telemedicine. The service may be low-cost if the healthcare organisation utilise their existing email infrastructure to provide their telemedicine service. Many healthcare organisations use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) email applications. COTS email applications are designed for peer-to-peer communication; hence, in situations where multiple clinicians need to be involved, COTS applications may be deficient in delivering telemedicine. Larger services often rely on different staff disciplines to run their service and telemedicine tools for supervisors, clinicians and administrative staff are not available in COTS applications. Hence, some organisations may choose to develop a purpose-written email application to support telemedicine. We have conducted a cost-minimisation analysis of two different service models for establishing and operating an email service. The first service model used a COTS email application and the second used a purpose-written telemedicine application.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The actual costs used in the analysis were from two organisations that originally ran their counselling service with a COTS email application and later implemented a purpose-written application. The purpose-written application automated a number of the tasks associated with running an email-based service. We calculated a threshold at which the higher initial costs for software development were offset by efficiency gains from automation. We also performed a sensitivity analysis to determine the effect of individual costs on the threshold.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The cost of providing an email service at 1000 consultations per annum was $19,930 using a COTS email application and$31,925 using a purpose-written application. At 10,000 consultations per annum the cost of providing the service using COTS email software was $293,341 compared to$272,749 for the purpose-written application. The threshold was calculated at a workload of 5216 consultations per annum. When more than 5216 email consultations per annum are undertaken, the purpose-written application was cheaper than the COTS service model. The sensitivity analysis showed the threshold was most sensitive to changes in administrative staff salaries.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In the context of telemedicine, we have compared two different service models for email-based communication – purpose-written and COTS applications. Under the circumstances described in the paper, when workload exceeded 5216 email consultations per annum, there were savings made when a purpose-written email application was used. This analysis provides a useful economic model for organisations contemplating the use of an email-based telemedicine system.</p

Adaptive Subchip Multipath Resolving for Wireless Location Systems

<p/> <p>Reliable positioning of cellular users in a mobile environment requires accurate resolving of overlapping multipath components. However, this task is difficult due to fast channel fading conditions and data ill-conditioning, which limit the performance of least-squares-based techniques. This paper develops two overlapping multipath resolving methods (adaptive and nonadaptive), and shows how the adaptive solution can be made robust to the above limitations by extracting and exploiting a priori information about the fading channel. Also the proposed techniques are extended when there are antenna arrays at the base station. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed techniques.</p

Extending the reach and task-shifting ophthalmology diagnostics through remote visualisation

Driven by the global increase in the size and median age of the world population, sight loss is becoming a major public health challenge. Furthermore, the increased survival of premature neonates in low- and middle-income countries is causing an increase in developmental paediatric ophthalmic disease. Finally, there is an ongoing change in health-seeking behaviour worldwide, with consequent demand for increased access to healthcare, including ophthalmology. There is therefore the need to maximise the reach of resource-limited ophthalmology expertise in the context of increasing demand. Yet, ophthalmic diagnostics critically relies on visualisation, through optical imaging, of the front and of the back of the eye, and teleophthalmology, the remote visualisation of diagnostic images, shows promise to offer a viable solution.In this chapter, we first explore the strategies at the core of teleophthalmology and, in particular, real-time vs store-and-forward remote visualisation techniques, including considerations on suitability for different tasks and environments. We then introduce the key technologies suitable for teleophthalmology: anterior segment imaging, posterior segment imaging (retinal imaging) and, briefly, radiographic/tomographic techniques. We highlight enabling factors, such as high-resolution handheld imaging, high data rate mobile transmission, cloud storage and computing, 3D printing and other rapid fabrication technologies and patient and healthcare system acceptance of remote consultations. We then briefly discuss four canonical implementation settings, namely, national service provision integration, field and community screening, optometric decision support and virtual clinics, giving representative examples. We conclude with considerations on the outlook of the field, in particular, on artificial intelligence and on robotic actuation of the patient end point as a complement to televisualisation