Biofeedback using telemedicine: clinical applications and case illustrations

Telecommunications technology is dramatically changing our world, allowing healthcare professionals to offer medical healthcare, in the form of consultation, assessment, and treatment, through the use of new communications media. In behavioral medicine, advances in telecommunications have brought about new ways of offering services by expanding healthcare to patients located all over the world and simultaneously reducing costs and improving outcome efficacy. This article describes the use of biofeedback to treat various pain and psychophysiological disorders through telemedicine technology. The authors provide a description of "off-the-shelf," low-cost, and low-bandwidth telemedicine equipment used to deliver clinical biofeedback treatment when the patient and provider are in two different locations. In addition, the authors discuss practical issues of behavioral telehealth.