Telehealth

Telehealth is the use of telecommunications and information technologies to provide health assessment, diagnosis, treatment, consultation, education, and health-related information across distances.

Technologies include videoconferencing, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, the internet, remote patient monitoring, and terrestrial and wireless communications.

In the MHS, the terms “virtual health”, “virtual medicine”, “telehealth”, and “telemedicine” all mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably. Most recent MHS planning documents use the term "virtual health."

In some cases, telehealth tools are used to support a particular clinical area, in which case, the term used often references the clinical area. Examples include: Telebehavioral health (aka telemental health, tele-psychiatry, and tele-psychology); tele-radiology; tele-cardiology; tele-ICU, and so on.

Connected health is a broader term that encompasses telehealth/virtual health technologies, as well as patient-focused mobile health (mHealth) technologies such as mobile apps and websites accessible by mobile devices.