While the terms “telehealth” and “telemedicine” are often used interchangeably, they represent distinct concepts within the healthcare system. Both rely on electronic communications and technology to deliver services across a distance. Telehealth is a broad umbrella covering many activities, while telemedicine is a specific subset focused on direct patient care. Understanding this relationship is necessary to accurately understand the full scope of virtual health services available today.
Telehealth: The Comprehensive Umbrella
Telehealth is defined as the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support a wide range of activities, including long-distance clinical care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration. This definition establishes telehealth as the overarching concept for all remote health services. The technologies involved can be varied, encompassing simple tools like a telephone or email, and more complex systems like secure video conferencing, mobile health applications, and streaming media.
This comprehensive scope means telehealth is fundamentally the delivery mechanism for improving health services, not just the delivery of a doctor’s visit. It involves the infrastructure and technology used to facilitate health-related functions when the patient and provider are not in the same physical location. Because of its broad nature, telehealth is the term often used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other payers when defining reimbursement structures for remote health services. The goal is to extend access to health services beyond traditional settings, overcoming barriers like distance.
Telemedicine: Focusing on Clinical Care
Telemedicine is the specific component of telehealth that focuses exclusively on the provision of remote clinical services. It involves the direct interaction between a healthcare provider and a patient for the purpose of diagnosis or treatment. Essentially, telemedicine is the remote version of a traditional doctor’s visit, requiring a direct provider-patient relationship.
Services falling under telemedicine include synchronous (real-time) video consultations for conditions like a cold, flu, or mental health management. It also includes asynchronous “store-and-forward” services, such as a teledermatologist reviewing high-resolution images of a skin rash or a radiologist interpreting diagnostic images sent from a remote facility. E-prescribing and remote specialty consultations are also examples of telemedicine, as they directly involve the clinical management of a patient’s health.
Practical Examples of Non-Clinical Telehealth Services
The distinction between the two terms is best understood by looking at services classified as telehealth that do not involve the clinical treatment of a patient, making them explicitly not telemedicine. One such category is provider-to-provider education, such as continuing medical education (CME) courses delivered via remote video conferencing to clinicians. This allows healthcare professionals to maintain their certifications and stay current on medical advancements without traveling.
Another non-clinical application is in health administration and public health. This includes remote hospital board meetings, administrative staff training sessions, or the secure exchange of electronic health records (EHR) between facilities for operational purposes. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is also a form of telehealth that involves the transmission of data, such as a patient’s blood pressure or glucose levels, from a home device to a secure server. While the subsequent clinical review and consultation about that data is telemedicine, the act of data transmission itself is a non-clinical telehealth service used for surveillance.