Despite the frequency of use of telemedicine in emergency care, limited evidence exists on its impacts at the patient, provider, organization, and system level. Hospital-based applications of telemedicine present a potentially important solution, particularly for small and rural hospitals where access to local specialists is rarely available.
We conducted a systematic review of telemedicine applications for hospital-based emergency care, which aims to synthesize the existing evidence on the impact of tele-emergency applications that could inform future efforts and research in this area.
A search of four databases (PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, Cochrane) using a combination of telemedicine and emergency room (ER) keywords for publications yielded 340 citations. Four coders independently determined eligibility based on initial criteria and then extracted information on the 38 resulting articles based on four main categories: study setting, type of technology, research methods, and results.
Of the 38 articles, 11 studies focused on telemedicine for diffuse patient populations that typically present in ERs, 8 studies considered telemedicine in the context of minor treatment clinics for patients presenting with minor injuries or illnesses, and 19 studies focused on the use of telemedicine to connect providers in ERs to medical specialists for consultations on patients with specific conditions. Overwhelmingly, tele-emergency studies reported positive findings especially in terms of technical quality and user satisfaction. There were also positive findings reported for clinical processes and outcomes, throughput, and disposition, but the rigor of studies using these measures was limited. Studies of economic outcomes are particularly sparse.
Despite limitations in their research methodology, the studies on tele-emergency indicate an application with promise to meet the needs of small and rural hospitals to address infrequent but emergency situations requiring specialist care. Similarly, studies indicate that tele-emergency has considerable potential to expand use of minor treatment clinics to address access issues in remote areas and overcrowding of urban ERs.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 15. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 August 2025.
All research outputs
#3,103,412
of 33,503,100 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Medical Informatics
#171
of 2,186 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#32,005
of 306,002 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Medical Informatics
#3
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,503,100 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,186 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 306,002 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
