Telemedicine is a general concept that has long been discussed in the medical community, is already being used in some medical branches such as psychiatry, and is also used in neurology, particularly in electrophysiology.
Online neurology telemedicine means practicing medicine remotely as a result of telephone, mail, videoconferencing, digital data, and other communication technologies. To date, communication via telephone has already been a frequently used telemedicine method to monitor the condition of follow-up patients, request examinations, initiate medications, and make adjustments. The Covid-19 pandemic we are currently experiencing necessitates the rapid development of telemedicine and the more frequent use of technologies other than the telephone.
Although we are aware that online neurology will never replace the art of medicine in face-to-face examinations, it will be used and developed for certain patients in the future. In this way, it enables patients to avoid places like hospitals that can be sources of infection, especially during periods of epidemics or pandemics, allows patients who are unable to mobilize to receive higher-quality care, and ensures that urgent needs are recognized more quickly.
Telemedicine used in neurological care is frequently called teleneurology. This method, which is frequently used abroad in acute stroke and neurological intensive care, has recently started to be used in diseases requiring long-term treatment such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, and migraines. The American Academy of Neurology, known as the AAN, which plays an active role in the neurology community, looks favorably upon teleneurology and has expressed a positive opinion, going a step further to begin establishing teleneurological examination standards.