Telehealth is the use of information and communication technology to provide healthcare over a distance. This includes the transmission of images, voice, data and videoconferencing between two or more sites.

Telehealth connects regional patients to safe, high quality and cost-effective clinical services closer to home. Telehealth provides regional patients with improved access to timely specialist and emergency care, which can lead to improved health outcomes.

Within the Western Australian public health system, telehealth is used in a number of different service delivery areas (see ‘Key telehealth service delivery areas’ below), however most commonly telehealth is used for:

• The Emergency Telehealth Service which uses telehealth technology to provide specialist emergency medicine support to clinical staff treating acute patients in country hospital emergency departments, and
• outpatient consultations between metropolitan-based specialists and regionally-based public patients via videoconference.

There is an extensive network of videoconferencing units within Health facilities across WA, mainly in hospitals, community health centres and nursing posts. These units provide a video link between specialist health professionals and their regional patients for clinical consultations, even though they may be separated by thousands of kilometres.

The high definition video consultation can be just like having the health professional in the room, with two-way audio and visual communication.

For outpatient specialist consults, a local health professional such as a GP or a physiotherapist, could also be in the room with the patient and speak with the specialist via video during the consultation. The patient could also have a family member or carer with them in the consultation. 

There are five key service delivery areas for telehealth in WA:

• Clinical outpatient telehealth service delivery – mostly videoconference outpatient appointments between regionally-based patients and specialists based in metropolitan public hospitals or other regional sites, for a vast array of medical treatments including:
• plastic surgery (burns, wound clinics etc)
• urology
• pain medicine
• gastroenterology
• speech pathology
• neurology
• respiratory medicine
• child and adolescent, adult, and older adult mental health services including clinical consultations, case reviews and clinical supervision
• paediatric outpatient services in a range of specialty areas including orthopaedics, rehabilitation, burns/plastics and developmental paediatrics
• joint replacement assessment clinic outpatient service, for the periodic review of patients following joint replacement surgery
• geriatric medicine service, for the delivery of geriatric assessments, case reviews and education
• and many more.
• The Emergency Telehealth Service is a telemedicine service provided by emergency medicine specialists in Perth using videoconferencing equipment to support regional clinicians treating very acute emergency patients. The aim of the Emergency Telehealth Service is to improve the equity of access to emergency medicine services for rural and remote patients.
  
  
• Training and education - providing opportunities for consumers and health staff to participate in training and education courses and clinics via videoconference regardless of their geographical location.
  
  
• Store and forward - applications that allow the safe and secure sharing of images, clinical results and patient information that can be documented, uploaded and reviewed by a clinician at a convenient time.
  
  
• Remote Patient Monitoring - enabling patients managing significant chronic diseases to share responsibility for their care through the process of self-monitoring in partnership with their healthcare provider.