Critical care telemedicine is a potential solution to the scarcity of critical care expertise, while quality and safe care can also be promoted through off-site surveillance, early warning capabilities, clinical decision support and alerts for non-adherence to best practices.

To date, data on its efficacy have been promising yet limited, partly because few studies consider baseline organisational and management factors such as the complexity of the ICU setting, type of interventions, staffing models, end-ICU users’ perceptions and organisational readiness.

The potential of critical care telemedicine is too great to ignore, and it is therefore increasingly likely for it to be a key feature of the future ICU.

If critical care telemedicine is to be successfully integrated into standard ICU practice, then its adoption needs to move away from the current haphazard approach of local initiatives towards the development of a more systematic and evidence-based implementation roadmap.

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