The role of eHealth, telehealth, and telemedicine for chronic disease patients during COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid systematic review

Abstract

Objective To summarize the current status of, and the current expert opinions, recommendation and evidence associated with the use and implementation of electronic health (eHealth), telemedicine, and/or telehealth to provide healthcare services for chronic disease patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and methods We searched four electronic databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, and Web of Science Core Collection) to identify relevant articles published between 2019 and 2020. Searches were restricted to English language articles only. Two independent reviewers screened the titles, abstracts, and keywords for relevance. The potential eligible articles, papers with no abstract, and those that fall into the uncertain category were read in full text independently. The reviewers met and discussed which articles to include in the final review and reached a consensus. Results We identified 51 articles of which 25 articles met the inclusion criteria. All included articles indicated the promising potential of eHealth, telehealth, and/or telemedicine solutions in delivering healthcare services to patients living with chronic diseases/conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We synthesized the main findings into ten usages and eight recommendations concerning the different activities for delivering healthcare services remotely for those living with chronic diseases/conditions in the era of COVID-19. Discussion and conclusions There is limited evidence available about the effectiveness of such solutions. Further research is required during this pandemic to improve the credibility of evidence on telemedicine, telehealth, and/or eHealth-related outcomes for those living with chronic diseases.

Protocol of a Systematic Review on Telemedicine Solutions in COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The reports have been showed more than five million people affected to COVID-19 in Iran until September 2021. Due to the lack of an effective therapeutic treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection, healthcare systems primarily focus on symptomatic therapy, social distance, the use of masks for personal protection, and forced quarantine after exposure to an infected person [5]. However, hospitalized patients not infected with COVID-19, especially those at higher risk of developing the disease (such as the elderly and those with underlying diseases), should receive daily care with minimal contact with other patients [6].…”

“…Natural catastrophes and epidemics create many problems for healthcare systems in providing health services [9]. However, the new pandemic has led to the widespread application of telehealth for facilitating patient-healthcare provider interaction [5,10], so that medical visits have shifted from faceto-face to remote medical appointments. Thus, telehealth and/or telemedicine technologies are beneficial methods that could be employed to deal with pandemic situation of communicable diseases.…”

“…Several review studies have explained the use of telemedicine and its dimensions in COVID-19 outbreak [1,5,[20][21][22]. Thus, this systematic review study aims to determine and sum up the functionalities, applications, and technologies of telemedicine in COVID-19 crisis.…”

Digital healthcare in cystic fibrosis. Learning from the pandemic to innovate future care (Commentary)

“…In a rapid systematic review of available evidence on the application of e-health, during the Covid 19 pandemic, some early evidence indicates that this approach is acceptable and has a number of attractions for healthcare systems practitioners and patients [9] . These studies, in general show promise in the use of e-health, par-ticularly virtual consultation, in delivering suitable healthcare services to people with chronic conditions.…”

“…Although primarily focused on virtual consultation the conclusions encourage further application of supervised of e-health, virtual consultation and remote monitoring. The review rightly emphasises the importance of further research in application of e-health solutions and the need to ensure the appropriate information technology infrastructure and training of multidisciplinary teams and of people with the conditions, to ensure optimal delivery [9] .…”