英文摘要 |
It has been almost ten years since the beginning of telemedicine application system in Taiwan. Although the overall investment reached 200 million NT dollars, the total number of visits seen by the system was only around 9000 times. Is this system really helpful or is the investment reasonable? The purpose of this study is to analyze the cost of telemedicine application system in Taiwan over the past nine years. Data from the Department of Health and the final running reports from five medical centers were analyzed to compare the potential costs of four different delivery models. Despite of the surprisingly huge investment, the usage of the system declined every year. The average number of visits of each connecting point has declined 80% since the beginning. However, if running costs of the system could be neglected, the cost associated with each telemedicine visit has been shown to be less than that of out-village visit. Therefore, if the usage of the system can be increased, the overall costs of delivering health care services to remote areas can be reduced. The telemedicine application system can be integrated into the remote health delivery system in Taiwan to further lower the running costs and efficiently increase its utilization. |