Telehealth: Simply a pandemic response or here to stay?
Suzanne Bakken
Abstract
A systematic review in this issue of Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) focused on teledentistry reminds us that telemedicine and telehealth approaches have been around for decades.1 However, there is no doubt that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed not only the frequency of patient-clinician visits conducted via technology across a distance, but also the emergence of widespread electronic personal protective equipment (ePPE) when the patient and clinician are in the same setting, as highlighted by Turer et al2 and Wosik et al3 in last month’s JAMIA. Moreover, the variety of technologies for achieving such interactions has dramatically changed as illustrated by 4 articles in this issue.4–7 However, in another highlighted article in this issue, Ramsetty and Adams8 delineate the digital divide issues that make access to telehealth technologies difficult for vulnerable populations, including the homeless,...