Achieving greater consistency in Telehealth project evaluations to improve organisational learning

Telehealth pilot projects and trial implementations are numerous but are often not fully evaluated, preventing construction of a sound evidence base and so limiting their adoption. We describe the need for a generic Telehealth project evaluation framework, within which evaluation is undertaken based on existing health systems performance indicators, using appropriately chosen measures. We provide two case studies explaining how this approach could be applied, in Australian and Canadian settings. It is argued that this framework type of approach to evaluation offers better potential for incorporating the learnings from resultant evaluations into business decisions by 'learning organisations', through alignment with organisational performance considerations.