Finkelstein 2004.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial
Participants	This study included patients with a mix of conditions: Congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic wound‐care patients. 68 subjects were enrolled, there was a requirement that either the subject or a supportive care partner was able to physically and cognitively use the equipment within the home environment.
Interventions	Intervention: there were two intervention groups for this study. Firstly, standard care plus videoconferencing/Internet access and, secondly, standard care plus videoconferencing plus physiological monitoring, e.g. spirometry in COPD. These technologies allowed Virtual Visits to be conducted between the nurse at the central site and the subject at home with audio and video interactions. Patients were trained to use the equipment. Control: the control group received standard home health care.
Outcomes	1. Termination from home care or loss of eligibility for home care. 2. Time to discharge to a higher level of care such as a nursing home or hospital. 3. Mortality. 4. Morbidity. 5. Patient perception of telehealthcare (Telemedicine Perception Questionnaire TMPQ). 6. Patient satisfaction Home Care Client Satisfact Instrument (HCCSI). 7. Quality and clinical usefulness of virtual visits. 8. Patient utilisation of services. 9. Cost for both subjects and service providers.
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient data
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient data
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Impossible to blind participants to intervention, not stated whether outcome assessor was blinded or data analyser.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	Out of 68 patients randomised 53 completed the study. 47 patients were interviewed after they concluded the study to gather patient satisfaction data.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	There is a significant amount of data missing from this report including costs and clinical effectiveness. Publishing this favourable report on patient opinions may condition the reader to expect further favourable results. The authors state that the reason for not yet publishing hard clinical endpoint cost data is that the data were not yet available.
Other bias	High risk	Results for COPD cannot be separated from results for other conditions and so this limits interpretation