TY - JOUR T1 - Telemedicine and virtual respiratory care in the era of COVID-19 JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.00111-2022 SP - 00111-2022 AU - Hilary Pinnock AU - Phyllis Murphie AU - Ioannis Vogiatzis AU - Vitalii Poberezhets Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/early/2022/05/05/23120541.00111-2022.abstract N2 - The World Health Organization defines telemedicine as “an interaction between a health care provider and a patient when the two are separated by distance”. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a dramatic shift to telephone and video consulting for follow up and routine ambulatory care for reasons of infection control. Short Message Service (“text”) messaging has proved a useful adjunct to remote consulting allowing transfer of photographs and documents. Maintaining non-communicable diseases care is a core component of pandemic preparedness and telemedicine has developed to enable (for example) remote monitoring of sleep apnoea, telemonitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, digital support for asthma self-management, remote delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation. There are multiple exemplars of telehealth instigated rapidly to provide care for people with COVID-19, to manage the spread of the pandemic, or to maintain safe routine diagnostic or treatment services.Despite many positive examples of equivalent functionality and safety, there remain questions about the impact of remote delivery of care on rapport and the longer-term impact on patient/professional relationships. Although telehealth has the potential to contribute to universal health coverage by providing cost-effective accessible care, there is a risk of increasing social health inequalities if the “digital divide” excludes those most in need of care. As we emerge from the pandemic, the balance of remote versus face-to-face consulting, and the specific role of digital health in different clinical and healthcare contexts will evolve. What is clear is that telemedicine in one form or another will be part of the “new norm”.FootnotesThis manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the ERJ Open Research. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJOR online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.Conflict of interest: Hilary Pinnock declares no conflicts of interest related to this review.Conflict of interest: Phyllis Murphie declares no conflicts of interest related to this review.Conflict of interest: Ioannis Vogiatzis declares no conflicts of interest related to this review.Conflict of interest: Vitalii Poberezhets declares no conflicts of interest related to this review. ER -