For more than 100s of years: clinicians, health services providers, APRNs, and others have been participating in the use of telecommunications to improve the health care system. All of these efforts are to improve patient care as it can become difficult for many reasons.

Telemedicine is the use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants.

Being from Egypt, we are taught from a young age that the hieroglyphics were the beginning of almost everything.

Egyptians became the first civilization to use hieroglyphics to spread information about medical outbreaks and diseases which is now termed Telehealth and Telemedicine.

The surgery in ancient Egyptian was so advanced that surgeons used various instruments similar to what we use today such as the scalpel, forceps, and scissors, splints were made of pieces of wood padded with plant fibers.

Kichloo, A., Albosta, M., Dettloff, K., Wani, F., El-Amir, Z., Singh, J., Aljadah, M., Chakinala, R. C., Kanugula, A. K., Solanki, S., & Chugh, S. (2020). Telemedicine, the current COVID-19 pandemic and the future: A narrative review and perspectives moving forward in the USA. Family Medicine and Community Health, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1136/fmch-2020-000530 

Shaver, Julia. (2022, April 25). The State of Telehealth Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9035352/#:~:text=Telemedicine%20was%20underused%20and%20understudied,rapid%20increase%20in%20telemedicine%20consultation.

HRSA. (2023, August 31). Telehealth policy changes after the COVID-19 public health emergency. https://telehealth.hhs.gov/providers/telehealth-policy/policy-changes-after-the-covid-19-public-health-emergency

The use of telemedicine has been rapidly increasing from 2010 to 2017, and the use of doctors/service providers that connect with patients through the use of video and other platforms has increased from 35% to 76%.

Insurance companies have reported that patient claims for telemedicine have increased by 53%. Because of the effectiveness of telemedicine, providers, and physicians can be sought out by patients who have difficulties getting to the doctor's offices.

The utilization of telemedicine has had positive impacts in the public health emergency beyond facilitating triage, including allowing the rapid deployment of large numbers of healthcare providers and the providing of services when local hospitals and healthcare centers are unable to meet demand.

Telemedicine has been a means of providing healthcare information not only to infected people but also to non-infected people during the COVID pandemic.

"Telehealth represented less than 1% of the total healthcare volume in the United States before the COVID-19 pandemic, and more than half of physicians used Telehealth for the first time in the pandemic’s first few months."

The CMS has recently expanded access to Medicare telemedicine. This expansion has allowed healthcare services to continue while preventing the spread of the virus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all Medicare beneficiaries across the USA can receive Medicare telemedicine care at the same rate as in-person healthcare visits. Telemedicine may be offered to new or established patients by clinicians, and a broad range of clinicians may provide services through telemedicine.