Telemedicine as an eHealth Tool for Empowering Community-Based Private Health Professionals in the Italian Context

eHealth, an evolving field in medical informatics and public health, involves delivering health services using information and communication technology (ICT) tools. Its introduction has improved healthcare delivery quality across health sectors and hospitals. The term eHealth is frequently used in academia and professional bodies in the healthcare domain. eHealth includes delivering health information and education over the Internet along with commercial products used by health professionals and patients to make healthcare delivery more efficient. It comprises a wide variety of clinical activities delivered through the Internet. Telemedicine, especially using two-way interactive audio/video communications and computers to deliver health services to remote patients, is an eHealth component. Both eHealth and Telemedicine are extensively used for facilitating remote monitoring and diagnosis, creating educational and health awareness and providing health education across geographical boundaries. In this chapter, we will focus on Telemedicine, as a possible eHealth tool. More precisely, we will briefly describe the European context, and subsequently, we will focus on the Italian context, where Telemedicine still appears to be an instrument difficult to understand and diffuse. Finally, we will focus on the need for training and information on Telemedicine and then provide a cost–benefit analysis regarding Telemedicine implementation.