Journal of Education and Health Promotion

Systematic review on telemedicine platforms in lockdown periods: Lessons learned from the COVID‑19 pandemic

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

. Mostafa Shanbehzadeh 1
. Hadi Kazemi-Arpanahi 2
. Sasan Ghorbani Kalkhajeh 3
. Gholam Basati 4

1 Department of Health Information Technology, School of Paramedical, Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran

2 Department of Heath Information Technology, Abadan University of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran, Student Research Committee, Abadan University of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran

3 Department of Public Health, Abadan University of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran

4 Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine Biotechnology and Medicinal Plants Research Center, Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran

Abstract
With the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19) outbreak, the transformation of the care
delivery model from conventional in-person (face to face) to largely virtual or remote care has been
accelerated to appropriately allocate resources and constrain the spread of the virus. In this regard,
telemedicine is a breakthrough technology to battle against the COVID‑19 emergency. Therefore, we
sought to identify the telemedicine applications in the COVID‑19 pandemic (tele‑COVID) according
to interaction modes, transmission modalities, and disease categories. This systematic review
was conducted through searching five databases including PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of
Science, and Science Direct. Inclusion criteria were studies clearly outlining any use of telemedicine
interactive mode during the COVID‑19 pandemic, written in English language and published in
peer-reviewed journals in 2020. Finally, 43 articles met the inclusion out of the 1118 search results.
Telemedicine provides a diversity of interaction modes and modalities affordable by patients and
physicians including short message service, E-mail and web portals, secure telephone calls or VOIP,
video calls, interactive mobile health applications (m-Health), remote patient monitoring, and video
conferencing. Transmission of video data using synchronized video calls via common social media
had the highest and exchange of data using store-forward service via secure messaging technology
and prerecorded multimedia had the lowest popularity for virtual disease management during the
COVID‑19 outbreak. Selection of telemedicine communication services and interaction modes with
regard to its use‑case, disease category, and application plays a significant role in the success of
remote disease management infrastructures in this scenario and their implication for a better future
healthcare system.

Keywords

Coronavirus
COVID‑19
telehealth
telemedicine
virtual care
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Journal of Education and Health Promotion
Volume 11, Issue 5
June 2021
Pages 1-10

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