Application of telemedicine and eHealth technology for clinical services in response to COVID‑19 pandemic

TLDR

Telemedicine and eHealth use ICT to deliver, manage, and monitor healthcare services, offering a timely solution to protect clinicians and patients while limiting mobility and reducing virus spread. The study aims to describe how telemedicine and eHealth can proactively improve clinical care by reviewing existing literature. It synthesizes data from published studies to illustrate the application of these technologies during the pandemic. The review demonstrates that telemedicine and eHealth are significant, widely adopted, and practical for clinical services, and recommends them as convenient, safe, scalable, effective, and green approaches during health emergencies.

Abstract

Telemedicine and eHealth refer to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) embedded in software programs with highspeed telecommunications systems for delivery, management, and monitoring of healthcare services. Application of telemedicine have become timely while providing great potentials to protect both medical practitioners and patients, as well as limit social mobility of patients contributing to reduce the spread of the virus. This study employs data from the existing literature to describe the application of telemedicine and eHealth as a proactive measure to improve clinical care. Findings from this study present the significance of telemedicine and current applications adopted during the pandemic. More importantly, the findings present practical application of telemedicine and eHealth for clinical services. Also, polices initiated across the world to promote management of COVID-19 are discussed. Respectively, this study suggests that telemedicine and eHealth can be adopted in times of health emergency, as a convenient, safe, scalable, effective, and green method of providing clinical care.