BMJ Clinical Review: Telehealthcare for long term conditions

Published earlier this month, a British Medical Journal clinical review entitled Telehealthcare for long term conditions by Susannah McLean and Aziz Sheikh of Edinburgh, UK, and Denis Protti of Victoria, Canada. It’s a comprehensive, academic overview and will be useful for medics who have not yet caught up with the difference between telehealth and telemedicine. But they have done a disservice by referring throughout to telehealthcare. Why, oh why, did they not refer to it as ‘telehealth’ when that meets their definition: “Telehealthcare is personalised healthcare delivered over a distance; data are transferred from the patient to the professional, who then provides feedback.”  Extract. (Full item is paid BMJ content.)