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Introduction
Home telemedicine systems provide a variety of functions for patients. These can typically be divided into four categories:
1. Synchronous videoconferencing for interacting with health-care providers.
2. Remote monitoring of physiologic parameters such as blood glucose, blood pressure, or pulmonary function tests.
3. Asynchronous communications, such as text messaging, for communication with health-care providers or other patients.
4. Web-based resources, such as data displays and educational information, which assists the patient in the self-management of their condition.
Most common telemedicine interventions provide one or two of these resources for patients. The IDEATel project is designed to provide all four. This chapter will briefly describe these resources and how they are implemented.
System Overview
Supporting all of the functional requirements of the intervention requires the tight integration of six technical components: the home telemedicine unit (HTU); the case management software that provides disease-specific longitudinal data displays for individual patients, summary data displays across patient panels for case managers and physicians, and secure messaging among patients and providers; a Web-based clinical information system that provides comprehensive patient-specific clinical data to providers and patients and that includes data-driven alerting capabilities; web access for patients to educational materials about diabetes and related health issues, and for review and entry of their own data; data security ; and networking and telecommunications.. These six components were integrated through a variety of interfaces.