ABSTRACT
The telemedicine industry has evolved as an alternative method of patient contact in the presence of barriers to face-to-face contact such as the current COVID-19 pandemic or other geographic and temporal barriers that prevent patients from accessing healthcare. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), half of the world's population cannot access basic health services. One of the promises of telemedicine is to reduce some of these barriers and improve access to healthcare and global health equity (Darkins and Cary, Telemedicine and telehealth: principles, policies, performance, and pitfalls, Springer, New York, 2000;Norris, Essentials of telemedicine and telecare, Wiley, London, 2002). Although telemedicine holds great promise, its implementation can be complicated by regulatory factors that can vary by country and region. Especially in developed nations, there may be complex laws and policies around aspects of telemedicine such as privacy and billing which can make its implementation difficult (Norris, Essentials of telemedicine and telecare, Wiley, London, 2002;Ackerman et al., Telemed J E Health 8(1):75, 2002). In this chapter, we provide an overview of purposes and mechanisms of telemedicine delivery, and the infrastructural and process requirements for a successful orthopedic telemedicine assessment. We discuss technical infrastructure required for a successful assessment including hardware, software, network, other tools, and physical space set-up. We then discuss the process involved in conducting smooth and effective encounter, both from the healthcare provider's point of view as well as the patient's point of view. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2022.