Читать книгу Blood and Marrow Transplantation Long Term Management - Группа авторов - Страница 64

Telemedicine is a quickly expanding mode of healthcare and is garnering great interest for its potential to improve access in a cost‐efficient manner to long‐term Hematopoietic Cell Transplant (HCT) survivorship care. Telemedicine, broadly defined as delivery of medicine from a distance, encompasses a range of technology spanning from the internet, telephones or smartphones, or other mobile wireless devices to provide a range of healthcare services and exchange of information [1].

One of the earliest reported uses for telemedicine was for acute conditions, such as ischemic stroke, as this life‐threatening condition required critical and time‐sensitive determination of fibrinolytic therapy from a remote neurologist [2]. Telemedicine has also been used to deliver care for those in the military, prisons, and rural locations and, more recently, it has been utilized for chronic medical conditions [3,4]. In the past few years, telemedicine has had an increasing presence in the delivery of oncology care. Beginning in the late 1990s, Doolittle and colleagues from the University of Kansas Medical Center pioneered teleoncology to improve access for rural patients to oncology care [5]. This approach resulted in high levels of patient satisfaction and cost‐effectiveness [6,7], which has been replicated by other oncology groups [8–10]. Since then, teleoncology has further expanded to include other services such as cancer telegenetics, teleradiology, telepathology, survivorship care and palliative care medicine [11].

Telemedicine is gaining increasing popularity in providing a cost‐effective means to deliver specialized medical care to patients who have difficulty accessing healthcare services due to limited resources, distance, or inconvenience. While its utility has been well‐documented for care of oncology and chronic illnesses, there is paucity of information for its use in the care of long‐term HCT survivors. We will discuss the current state of telemedicine in HCT long‐term follow‐up (LTFU) and future directions for a telehealth model of care in this setting.