Telecommunications technology, health services, and technology assessment

Technology assessment, applied to new or unestablished medical technologies, is concerned with the evaluation of risks, costs, benefits, and clinical effectiveness. Although relatively straightforward for many technologies, it is complex when one considers the use of telecommunications and information technology to provide health care at a distance. Data are needed regarding specific applications of specific technologies in circumscribed clinical situations. Health services can be provided through the use of appropriate technology, but the equipment and medium used must facilitate high quality transmission of different types of sensory and cognitive data. Constraints are placed on these data by the technical parameters of a telemedicine setup, but the effectiveness of health care also is dependent on the quality of the interaction between provider and patient, and in the case of telemedicine, between the equipment and its users. Usefulness and usability-and hence the design of the interface between equipment and the providers and patients who use it-must assume a more central role in the assessment of telemedicine technology