Telemedicine for Patient Management on Expeditions in Remote and Austere Environments: A Systematic Review

Telemedicine potentially offers enormous value to expeditions to remote environments. For healthcare professionals, telemedicine can provide access to specialist advice. Where no healthcare professionals are present, telemedicine may be the sole source of expert care. This systematic review appraises and summarizes the current literature regarding telemedicine in patient management on expeditions to remote locations and identifies areas for future research. MEDLINE and EMBASE were systematically searched for relevant articles from 1980 through February 2018. Data were handled according to the PRISMA process and analyzed using type-specific critical appraisal checklists where possible. Two hundred twenty-five articles were identified, 33 of which were included in this systematic review. They encompassed a variety of remote environments, including maritime (13), polar (9), mountainous (5), jungle (1), and multiple austere environments (6). Although some environments were better reported than others, many overarching concepts were generalizable. Through channels of communication that included telephone, radio, videoconferencing, and email, telemedicine has been used effectively in a range of environments to initiate treatment, follow up with patients, and determine the appropriateness of evacuation. Telementoring, in which a remote expert guides a local care provider in performing a procedure or task, is a promising aspect of telemedicine that is currently being developed. As technology advances, the scope of telemedicine will continue to expand. However, each new telemedical development must be shown to do more than simply function in a remote environment. Instead, new technologies should be tested for improved patient, practitioner, or expedition outcomes, within a telemedical system.