Demarcation and Usage of the Terms Telehealth, eHealth, Telemedicine and Digital Health

Abstract

The terms telehealth, e-health, telemedicine and digital health frequently used reciprocally or interchangeably. We decided to examine the occurrence of each phrase using the Scopus database in pursuit to add to the definition of the concepts of these services. We decided that other similar terms or sub-terms will be a subject of further studies.1 A total of 95,884 documents contained one of the four terms in the title, abstract or keyword. Telemedicine was the most common term, with 64,149 documents referring to it, followed by e-health by 23,754 and then telehealth with 22,387 and Digital health with 8,599 documents. Articles were the most common type for the four key terms, followed by review articles and conference papers . We note that the diversity in the use of the four concepts indicates the vagueness of the concepts and the need for a more precise definition of services and the establishment of certain definitions.