The Future of Telemedicine After Covid-19

Abstract

The American Telemedicine Association defines telemedicine as the remote delivery of healthcare services and clinical information using telecommunications technology. This includes a wide array of clinical services using internet, wireless satellite, and telephone media. Telemedicine itself, as part of digital health, leverages on information and communication technologies to expand access to healthcare by the masses. It is not quite certain when telemedicine first started but during the last one hundred years, several different levels and types of telemedicine have been implemented in clinical practice. Those would include telegraphic transmission of clinical information, transmission of electrocardiograms sent electronically, phone calls from patients to care providers to communicate their symptoms or outcomes after treatment, electronic transfer of diagnostic imaging, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) utilizing telemedicine to monitor the health of astronauts in space, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic and global efforts to expand access to healthcare by means of telemedicine.

Although information and communication technologies have dramatically advanced over the last 20 years, with greatly improved telemedicine platforms, a myriad of health-related devices in the market, innovation in neural networks, and artificial intelligence among others, the implementation of telemedicine in daily clinical practice before the COVID-19 pandemic has been very limited at best. This is likely due to multiple factors including reimbursement challenges, obsolete legislation and state or board license limitations, lack of awareness among stakeholders, and fear of privacy and security of medical information, among others. Historically, the most prevalent barrier for adoption of innovative technologies has been the fixed mindset of care practitioners and their risk aversion towards innovation.

During the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a true crisis and need for expanded access to healthcare, which rendered telemedicine as an ideal way to extend care to the masses with literally no risk of infectious contagion. Suddenly, many of those previously described bureaucratic challenges were relaxed globally as reactive emergency measures were implemented to expand care. This included the immediate universal adoption of virtual care practices during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter evaluates the landscape of telemedicine before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.