A Telemedicine System As a Care Modality for Dementia Patients in Korea

Summary:
Because dementia is a chronic debilitating disease, there are the issues of the difficulty in continuous long-term care and limited accessibility to medical service. We developed the telemedicine system for dementia patients and aimed to examine the acceptance, reliability, and clinical outcome of our telemedicine service. We established the Dementia Telemedicine Center in connection with two recipient sites in 1996. The reliability of the center, which provides telemedicine, tele-education, and telecounseling services, was tested by comparing assessment via our system with in-person assessment, and the clinical outcome was assessed by rating the changes of behavioral symptoms. There have been 140 registered patients for 2 years. The general acceptance of our system by the patients and caregivers was good, and the consistency rates between the assessment via our…

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