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Telemedicine and Palliative Care: an Increasing Role in Supportive Oncology

  • Lung Cancer (JM Johnson, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Oncology Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

With the emergence of telemedicine as a routine form of care in various venues, the opportunities to use technology to care for the most vulnerable, most ill cancer patients are extremely appealing. Increasingly, evidence supports early integration of palliative care with standard oncologic care, supported by recent NCCN guidelines to increase and improve access to palliative care. This review looks at the use of telemedicine to expand access to palliative care as well as provide better care for patients and families where travel is difficult, if not impossible. When telemedicine has been used, often in Europe, for palliative care, the results show improvements in symptom management, comfort with care as well as patient and family satisfaction. One barrier to use of telemedicine is the concerns with technology and technology-related complications in population that is often elderly, frail and not always comfortable with non-face-to-face physician care. There remain significant opportunities to explore this intersection of supportive care and telemedicine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, 1015 Walnut St, Suite 401, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, USA

    Brooke Worster & Kristine Swartz

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  1. Brooke Worster
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  2. Kristine Swartz
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Correspondence to Kristine Swartz.

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Brooke Worster and Kristine Swartz declare they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Lung Cancer

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Worster, B., Swartz, K. Telemedicine and Palliative Care: an Increasing Role in Supportive Oncology. Curr Oncol Rep 19, 37 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11912-017-0600-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11912-017-0600-y

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