Founder of GP2U, Dr James Freeman, speaking at the aged care conference, ITAC, said telehealth will not succeed under the existing funding model that is specialist centric, to the exclusion of GPs and allied health. This does not offer the patient a significant benefit or say in the process and so they are unlikely to engage, he says.

Last year there were 140 million Medicare funded services of which 8 million were telehealth eligible. However just 65,000 were delivered by telehealth. At the same time there were 25 million specialist services delivered.

His reading also at this point in time is that “there are too many moving parts, making it hard to implement”.

Separately a leading aged care IT General Manager in conversation made the comment that “at the moment telehealth is dead in the water” in his view because of the software integration required.