Telemedicine in inflammatory bowel diseases: A new brick in the medicine of the future?

Figure 1 Telehealth modality proposed in the management of inflammatory bowel diseases. Various data-obtaining and telecommunication systems can be established between patients and physicians engaged in the direction of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) management. Combining these data and interactions leads to the genesis of various telemedicine applications in the IBD setting to ensure a range of outcomes (i.e., clinical, therapeutic, diagnostic, nutritional, psychological, etc.).

Figure 2 Trends in telehealth research before and after the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak. Conducting a simple search in papers indexed in MEDLINE, it is glaring how since 2019 (the year in which the onset of today's coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic falls), there has been significant growth in papers produced combining telehealth with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). We also note, predictably, that before 2019 the mass of papers on IBD gradually showed a gradual growth trend in the period 1992-2008. The search for such data in this figure stopped on 2 April, 2023.

Figure 3 Inflammatory bowel disease patient telemedicine pathway. Based on the current evidence, various telemedicine applications are across the entire inflammatory bowel diseases management, from diagnosis to treatment setting and short-term and long-term monitoring of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, such telehealth applications are bidirectional. That is, they may have the potential to be both active (provided by the physician, psychologist, nurse or nutritionist, etc.) and passively requested by the patient from their healthcare managers on needs. IBD: Inflammatory bowel diseases.