The current role of telehealth in the management of patients with osteoporosis

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Telehealth is the use of electronic technologies for communication, storage, and analysis of health-related information. Telemedicine is a form of telehealth that involves remote patient care. This is a review and update of the use of these modalities as they apply to the education of healthcare professionals who provide care for patients with osteoporosis and the delivery of their care.

Areas covered

This review focuses on technology-enabled collaborative learning and its prototype model, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes). Bone Health TeleECHO and similar programs apply the ECHO model of learning to mentor healthcare professionals on implementation of best practice care for patients with osteoporosis and other skeletal diseases. Telemedicine, which has seen widespread uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic, is an alternative to in-person visits for patients with osteoporosis as well as for those with other conditions.

Expert opinion

Remote education of healthcare professionals and the remote delivery of patient care provides opportunities, as well as challenges, for achieving the goal of reducing the global burden of osteoporotic fractures.

KEYWORDS:

• Osteoporosis
• telehealth
• telemedicine
• ECHO
• COVID

Article highlights

• Telehealth is a term that is broadly used to describe all forms of electronic communication, data processing, and data storage in healthcare. This review describes the use of electronic communication for the education of healthcare professionals about osteoporosis and the care of patients with osteoporosis.

• In-person medical congresses and medical education at all levels can be enhanced or replaced by virtual connections such as webinars and online lectures. Challenges include technology breakdowns and limited opportunities for personal interactions.

• Bone Health TeleECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is the prototype for technology enabled collaborative learning. These are virtual communities of practice comprised of knowledge-sharing networks with interactive discussions of patient cases, recapitulating familiar learning methods in postgraduate medical training programs.

Telemedicine for patients with osteoporosis is an alternative to in-person clinic visits. It is most useful for patients located in underserved remote areas and for those who are unable or unwilling to travel to an in-person clinic. Challenges include inability for hands-on physical examination, poor patient use of technology, and communication barriers such as impaired hearing and dementia.

Declaration of interest

EM Lewiecki has received institutional research grants from Amgen and Radius; he is a consultant and speaker for Amgen.

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.