Telemedicine

Telemedicine

1. Definition & scope

• Telemedicine is the delivery of health-care services, where distance is a critical factor, by health-care professionals using information and communication technologies (ICT) for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease, research and evaluation, and for the continuing education of health-care providers — the WHO 2010 working definition adopted verbatim by the Indian guidelines [TPG-2020].
• Telehealth is the broader umbrella term: it encompasses telemedicine (clinical services) plus non-clinical services — provider training, administrative meetings, continuing medical education, and public-health surveillance delivered over ICT [TPG-2020].
• The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines (TPG) 2020 apply specifically to Registered Medical Practitioners (RMPs) of modern (allopathic) medicine — i.e. any practitioner enrolled in the State Medical Register or the Indian Medical Register under the IMC Act 1956 (now the NMC Act 2019) [TPG-2020][NMC-FAQ].
• In scope: consultations (text, audio, video; synchronous and asynchronous) between patient–RMP, caregiver–RMP, RMP–RMP, and health-worker–RMP; first and follow-up consultations; emergency advice limited to first-aid/life-saving counselling and facilitating referral [TPG-2020].
• Out of scope (explicitly excluded): specification of hardware/software/infrastructure and data-management standards; consultations outside the jurisdiction of India; use of digital technology for tele-surgery / remote robotic procedures; research and the formal education of health-workers; and the conduct/regulation of clinical trials [TPG-2020]. (Telemedicine is therefore distinct from general clinical-trial methodology, which provides only the underlying evidence-generation substrate.)
• The framing of telemedicine within MD Pharmacology rests on clinical pharmacology — the science of rational, safe, evidence-based drug use in actual patients — which KDT Ch.5 defines as requiring "understanding of the drug, the disease, the patient and the milieu in which it is undertaken" (KDT 8e Ch.5, p.71). Telemedicine is one such milieu.