**5. Service benefits**

### **5.1 Service redesign**

For telehealth to be most effective, great care must be given to the way in which the service is established; this includes consideration of the patient care pathway, workflow, information flow and professional relationships. For cost-effective

reasons, management and care of patients is often transferred to services in the community and primary care.

Therefore the design of the telehealth service must include assigning responsibilities for regular checking of data, making decisions on management and therapy, referral, and release from hospital. There must also be education and training for staff in community and primary care to prepare them for new responsibilities and managing complex conditions. The telehealth service must be provided with strong management that establishes good relationships between all clinicians, and has clear plans for change management.

Business Process Modelling (BPM) can be an effective methodology to capture patient care pathway, workflow and information flow, in order to understand the existing service model, and to provide understanding of the optimum structure to integrate telehealth.

**Figure 24** [64] demonstrates how the components and information flows of a telehealth system may be captured and elements of the workflow depicted. This model may then be used to determine how the services are established to enact the requirements identified by the model.

**Figure 24.** *Optimum design of a telehealth system in the UK (1) During office hours; (2) Out of hours [64].*
