Telehealth technologies for managing chronic disease - experiences from Australia and the UK

In developed countries, chronic disease now accounts for more than 75% of health care expenditure and nearly an equivalent percentage of disease-related deaths. The burden of chronic disease (often, but not exclusively, associated with ageing) includes congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hypertension and diabetes. Over the past several decades there has been an epidemiological shift in disease burden from acute to chronic diseases that has rendered acute care models of health service delivery inadequate to address population health needs. In response to these changes in disease demographics and the economic imperatives caused by an ageing population, service delivery models are shifting their focus from episodic care to continuity of care, from institutional care to community and home-based care, from disease treatment to disease prevention, and from an individual approach to a multidisciplinary team approach. In this paper, we will discuss business models as well as clinical services, biosignal processing approaches and knowledge management that we believe to be essential for the mainstreaming of telehealth services as an integral part of healthcare delivery in a modern industrialized society.