Videoconferencing in Telepsychiatry

SUMMARY Interactive videoconferencing is an easy, fast, and relatively inexpensive method of providing psychiatric services over long distances. The experiences of telepsychiatry practitioners have been promising in Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, and Australia. The first practical telepsychiatry experiments in Finland were carried out at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Oulu, where videoconferencing has been used for family therapy, psychiatric supervision, consultation, patient negotiations, and teaching. During 1998, out of a total of 400 hours, 35% of the online time was used for teaching, 24% for occupational counseling, 21% for consultations and patient negotiations, and 20% for methodological development and other activities (mainly testing the connections). The costs of inpatient negotiations via teleconferencing is half those of conventional negotiations. In general, cost analyses have also shown that telepsychiatric services are economically cost-effective in most European countries and in Australia, where a relatively small number of connections exists, while in the USA and Canada, high telecommunications costs make telemedicine more prohibitive compared to conventional care.