Medical not Behavioral Healthcare...

• What Issues are Important to YOU? by Larry Rosen, 5/28/97
  • Interactive Videoconferencing by A. Crum, 5/28/97
    
    

Most medical videoconferencing is done for consulting with other medical professionals, who may be experts on a particular condition. It is necessary, because vital X-rays, MRIs and other types of medical data needs to be exchanged via images.

This is not so much true in psychotherapy. Consulting can be (and currently is) done through simple e-mail or online case conferences such as those found here on BOL. Consultation through videoconferencing is unneeded and unnecessary.

Providing direct services to patients, and not to other medical professionals, is less often done in the medical field. Yet that is what many behavioral healthcare professionals are talking about when they bring up this idea of videoconferencing. Direct services -- psychotherapy -- to patients in remote areas. This is an entirely different beast than what most medical professionals are currently comfortable with.

Whether it's done via the Internet or POTS (plain old telephone service) is a side-issue. POTS offers better video quality currently, but the Internet can be okay for some applications.

John Grohol
Mental Health Net

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