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Telemedicine Use in Disasters: A Scoping Review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2021

Mark Litvak Open the ORCID record for Mark Litvak [Opens in a new window] ,
Katherine Miller ,
Tehnaz Boyle ,
Rachel Bedenbaugh ,
Christina Smith ,
David Meguerdichian ,
David Reisman ,
Paul Biddinger ,
Adam Licurse  and
Eric Goralnick
Mark Litvak
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Katherine Miller
Affiliation:
Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Tehnaz Boyle
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Rachel Bedenbaugh
Affiliation:
Center for Disaster Medicine and Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Christina Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
David Meguerdichian
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
David Reisman
Affiliation:
Center for Disaster Medicine and Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Paul Biddinger
Affiliation:
Center for Disaster Medicine and Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Adam Licurse
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Eric Goralnick*
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
*
Corresponding author: Eric Goralnick, Email: egoralnick@bwh.harvard.edu.
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Abstract

Disasters have many deleterious effects and are becoming more frequent. From a health-care perspective, disasters may cause periods of stress for hospitals and health-care systems. Telemedicine is a rapidly growing technology that has been used to improve access to health-care during disasters. Telemedicine applied in disasters is referred to as disaster telemedicine. Our objective was to conduct a scoping literature review on current use of disaster telemedicine to develop recommendations addressing the most common barriers to implementation of a telemedicine system for regional disaster health response in the United States. Publications on telemedicine in disasters were collected from online databases. This included both publications in English and those translated into English. Predesigned inclusion/exclusion criteria and a PRISMA flow diagram were applied. The PRISMA flow diagram was used on the basis that it would help streamline the available literature. Literature that met the criteria was scored by 2 reviewers who rated relevance to commonly identified disaster telemedicine implementation barriers, as well as how disaster telemedicine systems were implemented. We also identified other frequently mentioned themes and briefly summarized recommendations for those topics. Literature scoring resulted in the following topics: telemedicine usage (42 publications), system design and operating models (43 publications), as well as difficulties with credentialing (5 publications), licensure (6 publications), liability (4 publications), reimbursement (5 publications), and technology (24 publications). Recommendations from each category were qualitatively summarized.

Keywords

telemedicinetelehealthdisasterliteraturescopingreview
Type
Systematic Review
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 791 - 800
Copyright
© 2021 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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