Telemedicine technology assessment part II: tools for a quality control system.

Because no study has been done so far that fully assesses all the aspects that concur to achieve the quality of telemedicine applications, the authors propose a set of tools and procedures for Telemedicine Quality Control. A set of quality control procedures were developed in order to furnish tools to assess telemedicine products and/or services. The procedures were then submitted to manufacturers of telemedicine applications. An Informative Questionnaire and a Classification Form were specifically designed for maximizing the acquisition of data on the products/services. The other tools, a Technical File and a Quality Assessment Checklist (QACL), were intended to both evaluate and improve the quality of the telemedicine applications. The tools were continuously upgraded according to the manufacturer's suggestions. Because of the synergy that ensued, each tool was designed to cover a wide range of aspects for the evaluation of the telemedicine products and services. Thus, the Informative Questionnaire became the core tool for acquiring the information, whereas the QACL was the core evaluation tool. The proposed tools have been used in an integrated manner, and constitute a full quality control process for the assessment of telemedicine products.