Telemedicine in the Cardiovascular World: Ready for the Future?

One of the major concerns in the US healthcare system revolves around access to care, including specialty care. While many factors contribute to lack of access, the most common one is time (both for practices and patients). From a practice perspective, the inability to access a cardiologist for weeks if not months is usually due to an often overwhelmed clinic schedule. Leaving work, caring for a family member, transportation, parking, and other expenses are clear factors from the patient’s perspective.

Now, the COVID-19 crisis has brought telemedicine to the forefront of care delivery, giving patients and physicians first-hand exposure to the technology. The broader access and simplification of technology interface has provided a nontraditional mode to care delivery in which online, “face-to-face” video, phone visits, or even two-way text communication is easily applied. Furthermore, simple everyday technology tools can provide easy and fast access to curbside consultations, quick urgent-care questions and management, up-titrating medications, and the more important but often under-delivered continuous counseling for preventive medicine. In this review, we provide an overview of telemedicine development and explain how telemedicine is the perfect vehicle to deliver many aspects of cardiovascular patient care.