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ABSTRACT With the advent of national health reform, millions more Americans are gaining access to a health care system that is struggling to provide high-quality care at reduced costs. The increasing adoption of electronic technologies is widely recognized as a key strategy for making health care more cost-effective. This article examines the concept of connected health as an overarching structure for telemedicine and telehealth, and it provides examples of its value to professionals as well as patients. Policy makers, academe, patient advocacy groups, and private-sector organizations need to create partnerships to rapidly test, evaluate, deploy, and pay for new care models that use telemedicine.
Chief amongthe policy goals achieved by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the mandate to expand access to health care to millions of additional Americans.While admirable, this mandate will increase the strain on an already overburdened and extremely costly delivery system. In particular, given the shortage of primary care providers,1 affordable, high-quality health care for increasing numbers of elderly, chronically ill people may not be available without adopting new ways of delivering care. The growth in chronic illness will continue to spiral upward, with a 40 percent increase in heart disease and a 50 percent increase in cancer and diabetes projected for 2023.2 Baby boomers are just beginning to enter their high-maintenance health care years of sixty-five-plus,3-6 while workforce statistics show that physicians and nurses are both in short supply.7,8 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) predicts that health care costs could reach almost 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2022 without interventions.9 Policy makers, payers, providers, and patients are actively exploring ways to control the cost of health care through value-based purchasing plans, innovative care delivery systems, and novel means of empowering patients to manage their own illnesses.
One promising solution lies in rapidly expanding the uses of technology in health care. Telemedicine (the use of technologies to remotely diagnose, monitor, and treat patients) and telehealth (the application of technologies to help patients manage their own illnesses through improved self-care and access to education and support systems) are being applied and combined to create new ways to deliver care.When properly implemented, the broad adoption of connected health has the potential to extend...