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Telehealth

Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging

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Synonyms

Telemedicine

Definition

Telehealth “is the means by which technologies and related services concerned with health and well-being are accessed by people or provided for them irrespective of location” (Doughty 2018). This amends the original definition set out by the Telehealth Quality Group which referred to access or provision “at a distance” rather than “irrespective of location” and may have inadvertently and incorrectly signaled a lesser relevance of telehealth in urban center areas (Fisk 2014; Paraciani et al. 2017). As with telemedicine, telehealth products are used or services operated in contexts where the provider and the consumer are physically separated; therefore, a communication link is needed to connect them.

The Telehealth Quality Group definition fits with those offered by Darkins and Cary (2000) and the World Health Organization (2010), where both of the latter see telehealth and telemedicine as, in part, synonymous. The distinction that they recognized was...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Malcolm Fisk

Authors
  1. Malcolm Fisk
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Malcolm Fisk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Population Division, UN Dept of Economic Social Affairs Population Division, New York, NY, USA

    Danan Gu

  2. Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

    Matthew E. Dupre

Section Editor information

  1. School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Ping Yu

  2. Smart Infrastructure Facility, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Ping Yu

  3. Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Ping Yu

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Fisk, M. (2019). Telehealth. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_455-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_455-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Telehealth
    Published:
    12 May 2021

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_455-2

  2. Original

    Telehealth
    Published:
    21 July 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_455-1

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