According to World Health Organization (WHO) eHealth is defined as the information and communication technology (ICT) usage for health (1). World Health Assembly stated that digital technologies will be one of the main actors that will help to improve public health in future (1). Executive Board of the Assembly points out the importance of eHealth system that will be strengthen with the ease of use, broad reach and wide acceptance (1). There are two sub areas in eHealth subject which are very important to understand the topic: telemedicine and telehealth.

Telehealth and telemedicine is an accurate and affective way of developing health, if they are served in relevant standards of care. The appropriateness of a telemedicine service should be applied by the standard of care instead of arbitrary policies. Available technology potential as well as an existing physician-patient relationship affects if the standard of care can be accomplished for an exact patient encounter type (2). Telehealth technologies and tactics support virtual medical, health and education services (3). Telehealth technologies can enlarge patient-physician partnership, provides access to care, improve health outcomes by enabling timely care interventions, and decrease costs when utilized as a component of, and coordinated with, longitudinal care (3).

Telemedicine can be defined as the practice of medicine uses technology to provide care remotely (3). Telecommunication infrastructure is used by a physician for providing care from a distant location.

On the other hand, telehealth is related to electronic and telecommunications technologies and services that help to assist care and services from a different location (3).

Telehealth and telemedicine differ in point of that telehealth acts broader scope of remote health care services than telemedicine. Telemedicine mainly interested in the remote clinical services, while telehealth focuses on remote non-clinical services (3).

During the Covid-19 pandemic, telehealth and telemedicine play popular role around the world. For instance in USA, Congress passed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act on March 6. The legislation allows physicians and other health care professionals to bill Medicare fee-for-service for patient care delivered by telehealth during the current coronavirus public health emergency (4). The legislation also makes it possible that telehealth services to be provided to Medicare patrons by phone, but only if the phone allows for audio-video interaction with the qualified provider and the patrons (4).

Currently, Covid-19 pandemic forced the dilemma of giving health care to patients and keep them at home (5). Patients having acute and chronic diseases need to get health care while personnel of the provider like nurses and doctors should be protected against extra possible Covid-19 infected contact. Therefore telemedicine and telehealth type of service becomes very popular around the world. Continuous development in scientific and technological areas like robotics, sensors, artificial intelligence, genomics, data analytics/informatics, nanotechnology, and virtual reality provide a solid foundation for providing precision medicine, with high benefits in giving the right care to the right patient at the right time while decreasing the false treatment, debilitating side effects, redundancies, and inefficiencies. Telemedicine provides capabilities to utilize these advances within networks that transcend geography. The telemedicine community must develop the technology to bypass the traditional role of telemedicine as a connectivity tool only (5).

Physicians and health care providers need to update their guidelines for ethical use of telemedicine and telehealth care. Applied ethics, context-sensitive approach that explores interactions among multiple factors and considerations should be used in evaluation. This type of evaluation can help telehealth, and other related information technologies to be integrated into healthcare ethically and effectively (6).

According to WHO, many developed countries reported concerns regarding legal issues such as those associated with ensuring patient confidentiality. For support in establishing legal policies, Member States are encouraged to refer to the legal report, which forms a part of the GOe eHealth series (7).

There are also some limitations of telehealth and telemedicine technology in daily usage. These limitations may directly affect the efficacy of the technology. One of these limitations is some situations need to be supported by in-person face-to-face visits. According to the urgency of the situation, understanding the underlying health conditions in a short time, or inability to perform an adequate physical exam can limit the physicians’ decision (7).

Another important issue is the access to the technological device to use the telehealth/telemedicine system. Also connectivity problems can be counted in this part as an important limitation. Patients’ familiarity to technology usage is another issue to be considered here. At last, but not least, cultural acceptance of virtual visit is one of the important points that will affect the usage of provided service (7).