Tele-medicine: a new promised land, just to save resources?

In industrialised countries there is a 95% probability that in 2030, male life expectancy at birth will be in excess of 80 years [1]. As a consequence, there will be an increasing incidence of chronic and non-communicable diseases, as well as an increasing worldwide population of “chronically critical” patients due to respiratory diseases. These conditions, combined with high and sometimes unrealistic citizens’ expectations, have already led to high burdens for healthcare systems. For example, under the current law, in the USA health expenditure is projected to grow at an average 5.6% annual rate from 2016 to 2025 and represent 19.9% of gross domestic product by 2025 [2]. Therefore it is no surprise if governments are or will be unable to sustain the past level of welfare, and are looking for new models of care with better cost/benefit ratios. Unfortunately, it seems that some of these models seek to only reduce the numerator, the costs, and not increase the denominator, the benefit.