Editor’s Note: Volume Overview
The current issue of the International Journal of Telerehabilitation (IJT) begins with the follow-up to a fall, 2011 article, in which Valerie Watzlaf PhD, RHIA, FAHIMA, and colleagues published a privacy and security checklist to evaluate Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) videoconferencing software. Watzlaf et al. now report on the application of their check-list to analyze the current privacy policies of the top ten VoIP videoconferencing software. The results are both surprising and provocative. It was surprising to learn of such a wide range in the expressed use of encryption; that 70% of percent of the companies assessed did not specify any form of auditing on their servers; and, that company websites might potentially share the content of recorded telerehabilitation sessions outside of the country in which they were recorded. Moreover, the article suggests provocative questions. To what extent should the company, clinician, and user share responsibility for determining if the potential benefits of VoIP videoconferencing software use outweigh the security and privacy risks? What risks are acceptable? What constitutes informed consent of such risks?
The ITJ is extremely honored to publish a “country report” in which the President of the South African Telemedicine Association and Professor and Head of the Department of TeleHealth, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine relates the status of telerehabilitation in South Africa. Maurice Mars, MD provides a superb accounting of the factors that constrain telerehabilitation development in South Africa. These difficulties include challenging economic conditions, shortages of rehabilitation clinicians, insufficient power resources, and “a disproportionate burden of disease.” Dr. Mars suggests pragmatic strategies to forge a path forward.
The final two articles focus on pediatric telepractice and detail the clinical application of telerehabilitation by university-based clinicians in two professional disciplines. Occupational therapist Jana Cason, DHS, OTR/L, is a leader in the application of telerehabilitation to Early Intervention services. Speech-language pathologist Susan Grogan-Johnson, PhD and colleagues are similarly well known for their pioneering work in the application of speech-language pathology telepractice to rural communities.
Call for Submissions
The next volume of the International Journal of Telerehabilitation will be published in fall, 2011. We cordially invite your submissions by August 1, 2011, and accept original research, case studies, viewpoints, technology reviews, book reviews, and country reports that detail the current status of telerehabilitation.
Our peer reviewers constitute a multi-disciplinary group, and include researchers and clinicians from each of the major rehabilitation disciplines, rehabilitation engineers, health information managers, information technologists, and others. We welcome new peer-reviewers and invite guest editors with ideas for special, thematically focused issues. The IJT is agile and can add additional issues as warranted to ensure currency. Please contact me if you are interested:ecohn@pitt.edu.
Acknowledgments
We greatly appreciate the contributions of our authors and the support of a host of new and returning reviewers; colleagues at the Rehabilitation Research Engineering Center on Telerehabilitation (especially graphic designer Joseph Ruffing); and our publishers, Timothy S. Deliyannides, Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing and Head, Information Technology, University Library System, and Vanessa Gabler, Electronic Publications Associate at the University of Pittsburgh.
Sincerely,
Ellen R. Cohn, PhD
Editor