This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database.

Ohinmaa A, Chatterley P, Nguyen T, Jacobs P. Telehealth in substance abuse and addiction: review of the literature on smoking, alcohol, drug abuse and gambling. Edmonton: Institute of Health Economics (IHE). 2010

The results of this review indicate that the Internet, computer, and telephone applications in alcohol and smoking addictions are at least as effective as conventional services, especially when we review more recently published applications that utilize personalized, interactive modular settings. There was some evidence from telehealth in the area of illicit drugs applications, but the number of studies was still relatively small (eight studies). There is a need for further studies which use telehealth for gambling addiction. Although telehealth applications are expected to be less expensive than individual face-to-face therapies, there is no good quality literature in the cost-effectiveness of telehealth applications in the studied addictions.

Subject indexing assigned by CRD

Behavior, Addictive; Ethanol; Gambling; Humans; Smoking; Substance-Related Disorders; Telemedicine; Videoconferencing

English

Canada

Alberta

An English language summary is available.

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05/01/2011