Research commissioned by the Telehealth Forum has found that the vast majority of people in the UK still have never heard of ‘telehealth’ or ‘telecare’. The research, conducted by YouGov, surveyed 2,054 adults (over 18s) online in the UK and found that 91% of them had never heard of telehealth or telecare. Perversely, of people surveyed who were aged 55 or over (and more likely to be one of the 15 million people in the UK to have a long term condition) 93% had never heard of telehealth or telecare.
Carl Atkey, head of Appello, said “This research is really important feedback for us and has confirmed what we suspected. While engagement campaigns like 3millionlives are focusing on the health professionals, we think that it is vitally important to engage the patients – the people who will actually be using our services. This has surely got to be a priority for us, we need the terms ‘telehealth’ and ‘telecare’ to be as widely used and understood by the public as ‘stethoscope’ and ‘syringe’.” Press release (PDF)