Abstract

Telemedicine (TLM) has a great innovation potential, and this fact has emerged dramatically in this pandemic period. Besides the monitoring of COVID-19 patients themselves, TLM can improve the followup of affected by chronic diseases, whose access to hospitals and outpatient structures is limited due to the risk connected with the pandemic and the overload experienced by the medical structures and personnel. Hence, this period represents an occasion to experiment new care models. For these purposes, we have implemented a TLM system to help clinicians in the follow-up of COVID-19 patients both in hospital and at home. The same infrastructure has great potential of applications in other fields, e.g., neurodegenerative diseases. During our experiments, we have pointed out some strengths and weaknesses of this novel approach to care. Our conclusion is that, whereas technology and data processing is quite mature, many non-technical aspects have still to be faced in order TLM instruments can enter the daily clinical practice and deeply transform care models.