Assessment of a telemedicine service: The experience of Valle d'Aosta

In spite of existing barriers, telemedicine initiatives are now proliferating across Europe. Healthcare is facing increasing quality and resource challenges and telemedicine is often regarded as part of the solution. Numerous pilots are underway, but one would ask if these telemedicine services are really able to make healthcare more efficient and to increase access, quality, safety of care. The assessment of the effectiveness and sustainability of health information services is a very complex task because it should consider a multitude of heterogeneous variables, such as actors, technology devices, the environment in which they are implemented, their interactions and most importantly, their outputs and outcomes. In this study we present a methodology based on the identification of a set of indicators for the evaluation of telemedicine applications. This method has been tested on a real telemedicine service implemented within the Partout Sanità Project in Aosta Valley (Italy).