RESPONSE TO ON THE COSTS OF HOME-BASED TELEMEDICINE PROGRAMS: A COMMENT ON MICHAUD ET AL

In this statement, we attempted to highlight the difficulty for relevant stakeholders to make informed decision for future adoption and/or implementation based on the existing evidence even though all included studies in our review concluded home monitoring programs reduced costs in the absence of detailed cost information. [...]the primary objective of our study was to understand the cost structures and cost components of home telemedicine based on a systematic review approach instead of a scoping review of full-scale economic evaluation of telemedicine that Drs. Kidholm and Kristensen conducted (3). [...]because we aimed to identify costs of home telemedicine programs in the published literature to facilitate the future adoption, implementation, and sustainability, we limited the studies with telemedicine in the U.S. setting due to the difference and diversity of healthcare systems and culture abroad. [...]we inclined not to miss any potential eligible studies by limiting the study design to randomized control trials only and conducting searches not only in the Medline database, which were used in Drs. Kidholm and Kristensen's review, but also expanding our search to Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases to retrieve as many potential studies as possible.