Current and Future Questions for Telemedicine Research in Oncology—Moving Beyond Feasibility

Ce dossier présente un ensemble d'articles concernant la prise en charge des cancers durant la crise sanitaire liée au COVID-19

Résumé en anglais

Telemedicine had a potential use for improving efficiency and delivery of cancer care that remained unrealized until the COVID-19 pandemic. Supported by a convergence of risk of infection that led to a need to prioritize remote visits and a legislative environment that lowered barriers of reimbursement and interstate licensure for telemedicine, oncology practices in many health care systems rapidly converted to telemedicine, variably defined as video-based or audio only. These early experiences were generally characterized as successful, with the qualifier that telemedicine has been perceived as more appropriate for some clinical scenarios than for others. Alongside this theme, it has become clear that some subsets of patients are better equipped for telemedicine than are others. The limitations have sometimes been associated with age-, communication-, and/or sensory-related disabilities; societal factors such as education, wealth, and insurance status; and poor health and comorbidities. The net result is that many of the patients who are in greatest need of assistance are likely to be those least capable of availing themselves of telemedicine.