| Summary: | Among their many innovative efforts to increase Veterans' access to high-quality health care services - particularly for Veterans living in rural and remote locations - the US Department of Veterans Affairs has built a telehealth program that has recently been described as the largest in the nation. Telehealth in the VHA is defined as: "The wider application of care and case management principles to the delivery of health care services using health informatics, disease management and telehealth technologies to facilitate access to care and improve the health of designated individuals and populations with the intent of providing the right care in the right place at the right time." Telehealth (also referred to as telemedicine, telecare, teletherapy, eHealth, and mHealth) encompasses a wide range of technologies (eg, real-time or 'synchronous' interactive teleconferencing or videoconferencing, 'asynchronous' acquisition of data, images, sounds, and/or video that are stored and forwarded for later clinical evaluation, messaging), clinical applications, and settings (eg, home, another health care site, community).
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