Leveraging Telehealth to Improve Diabetes Care Preface

In today ’s health care environment, the use of digital health—including mobile health (mHealth), health information technology, wearable devices, telehealth, telemedicine, and personalized medicine—is here to stay (Figure 1) (1). The broadest category of digital health is often referred to as “eHealth” and encompasses any electronically delivered health promotion. For example, an internet search of symptoms leverages eHealth. Within the broad eHealth category is mHealth, which is simply the exercise of eHealth using a mobile device such as would occur with the use of mobile health ap plications (apps) on a smartphone or similar device. Since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there are probably very few health care providers (HCPs) or patients who remain unfamiliar with the concept of telehealth. The terms “telehealth” and “telemedicine” are o ften used interchangeably despite technically meaning different things. Telehealth is the broader of the two terms and encompasses a wide range of telecommunication technologies and services that can support the remote delivery of health and medical care; telemedicine refers more specifically to the direct delivery of health care to a patient by an HCP remotely via telehealth technologies and platforms (2). ThisDiabetes Spectrum From Research to Practice section focuses on the broader concept of telehealth, which allows us adequate bandwidth to discuss a broad array of technologies, their u...
Source: Diabetes Spectrum - Category: Endocrinology Source Type: research