The global telehealth market is projected to grow to $1 billion by 2016 and jump to as much as $6 billion by 2020. Those figures, from a new report by InMedica, part of IMS Research, translate to good news – and not just for the purveyors of video screens, exam cameras, blood glucose meters, pulse oximeters and weight scales.

The expansion of the telehealth market also holds promise for care providers – and especially for their patients – across the country and around the world.

This issue of Healthcare IT News features a telehealth story on the cover and a special section on telehealth inside, beginning on Page 16.

The stories illustrate the breadth and depth of diagnosis, treatment and follow-up that can occur via telehealth, and the reach telehealth technology can offer to remote island communities, rural regions, underserved urban neighborhoods and even on the battlefront.

In Alaska, a device called the “turtle” securely transmits patient data from home to the care provider several times a day – the better to monitor chronic conditions such as COPD, heart disease and hypertension.

In Boston, patients with diabetes who have trouble controlling their A1c levels, or are starting insulin therapy, upload blood glucose readings to a database using a wireless home hub.

“We’ve shown that increasing engagement from both patients (as measured by frequency of blood glucose upload) and care provider (as measured by frequency of logging into the Diabetes Connect website) lead to improved A1c (up to a 1.5 percent drop when both parties are engaged),” says Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of the Center for Connected Health, part of Partners Healthcare in Boston.

In Texarkana, Texas, a woman who had suffered a stroke was quickly diagnosed, via video, by a neurologist in Baltimore who prescribed a life-saving drug that has to be administered within a few hours of a stroke.

“It’s all about access to specialists, which is important in any situation involving urgent medical care when there’s a clock ticking in the background,” REACH Health’s president and CEO William Hamilton told Eric Wicklund, Healthcare IT News’ senior editor for telehealth.

We’ve all heard compelling stories like the one in Texarkana. Saving lives is part of the promise of telehealth. But there’s more. Telehealth can provide access to healthcare where there is none. It can help prevent costly hospital re-admissions. It can engage the individual in his or her own health in a way that a visit to the doctor once or twice a year cannot.

It’s what the federal government is promoting with its ONC consumer engagement initiative.  It’s about putting the patient at the center and also about engaging the patient enough to take responsibility for his or her care.

In Boston, Kvedar’s Center for Connected Health, which will hold its annual symposium Oct. 20-21, has already shown that, given the right information and the right measures, patients are eager to take charge.

“The data is what unlocks both patient self-management and patient-centered care,” said ONC chief Farzad Mostashari, MD, recently when talking about ONC’s consumer engagement effort.

There are some major barriers to widespread adoption of teleheath and home monitoring and measuring technologies – among them the slow expansion of broadband networks, uncertainty over FDA regulation of medical apps and slow uptake of monitoring devices among the elderly – perhaps because the designs are quite right.

But none of these challenges is insurmountable. And the payoff? A completely different approach to care, in which the patient is empowered to take charge.

“Imagine a world where we are all equipped with ‘wear and forget’ sensors continuously streaming wireless information about one’s health,” writes Kvedar in a recent blog. “This forms a powerful set of information to analyze and on which to base quality and performance decisions.” Yes, imagine.