Telemedicine in the emergency department: an overview of systematic reviews

There is both favorable and controversial evidence on the application of telemedicine in the emergency department (ED), which has created uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of these systems. We performed a systematic review of the literature on systematic reviews to provide an overview of the benefits and challenges to the application of telemedicine systems for the ED.

PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases were explored for systematic reviews of telemedicine applications for the ED. Each review was critically appraised by two authors for data items to be extracted and evaluated. The most highly recommended technology, feasibility, benefits, and challenges to the application of telemedicine systems were studied and reported.

We identified 18 studies of varying methodological quality and summarized their key findings. Form these 18 studies, 12 papers yielded a high risk of bias in their investigation. Nine papers concluded that real-time video conferencing was the best method of delivery, eight papers found cost reduction as an outcome of implementing these systems, and six studies found technical and infrastructure issues as a challenge when implementing telemedicine for EDs.

There is strong evidence suggesting that the use of telemedicine positively impacts patient care. However, there are many challenges in implementing telemedicine that may impede the process or even impact patient safety. In conclusion, despite the high potential of telemedicine systems, there is still a need for better quality of evidence in order to confirm their feasibility in the ED.