[Interventional decentralized telemonitoring: possible indications and perspectives of a new method in telemedicine]

Telemedicine comprises different concepts aiming to close a spatial distance between practitioner, medical staff and patient. Its functionality can include mere data transmission but extend as well to triggering alarms or enable consultation and therapy suggestions. A special form of telemedicinal application is interventional decentralized telemonitoring. Here practitioner-patient communication is characterized by telemedicinal data collection driven therapy-control and -optimization. To identify feasible indications for the employment of telemonitoring a detailed definition of communicated parameters, alarm rules and algorithms of intervention are required as well as a benefit-cost analysis. The quality of the telemedical application is determined by the medical quality of the resulting actions.