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A CBS News video clip highlighted the shift that many schools are making from traditional health care services to telemedicine. In Rochester, NY, eleven daycare centers and seven schools are now using telemedicine to connect to ten doctors’ offices in the city. Through online platforms, nurses can diagnose minor illnesses and infections in children—the Rochester schools are particularly excited about telemedicine because they reported that absences from school have dropped by 60%. Working parents are now readily seeking health care for their children, as they don’t face the risk of missing an entire work day to take their children to the hospital.
Although telepractice has been recommended by ASHA as an effective method for delivering speech therapy, some experts have wondered if diagnosis of speech disorders was also possible via videoconferencing. A 2006 study conducted by researchers at the University of Queensland suggests that online diagnosis of childhood speech disorders is not just possible—it can actually become a reliable method of assessing speech disorders. The researchers asked a face-to-face and online clinician to separately examine and diagnose six young children with speech disorders. The result? The clinicians exhibited high levels of agreement, especially in the area of speech intelligibility, where their scores were 100% in agreement. Online diagnosis is not right for all patient populations, but this pilot study reveals the potential for online assessment of speech disorders to become an accurate and reliable service for those who do not have access to face-to-face therapy.
An article in the New York Times yesterday reports that a new Department of Education study reached the conclusion that “On 
average, students in online learning conditions perform better than those receiving face-to-face instruction”. The study, conducted by SRI International, examined 99 academic reports from 1996 – 2008 that directly compared students’ online and classroom performance. The remarkable find was that online learners generally scored in the 59th percentile on exams, while traditional classroom learners only scored in the 50th percentile. This study reaffirms the value of online learning experiences, and we are certain that online courses will become more popular as more students discover the advantages of online learning.
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