ArticlePLOS digital health2025
Telemedicine in adult intensive care: A systematic review of patient-relevant outcomes and methodological considerations.
Article in PLOS digital health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- From carbon cost to climate care: Greening our intensive care units.World journal of critical care medicine · 2026Review
- Smart Cardiac ICU: Digital Integration, Predictive Analytics, and Perioperative Inflammation.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Artificial intelligence assisted telemedicine, clinical decision support for anesthesia and critical care in intensive care units: a scoping review.BMC anesthesiology · 2026Article
- Telemedicine Devices in Prehospital Trauma Care: A Scoping Review of Telemedical Actions, Clinical Utilities and Implementation Barriers.Journal of medical systems · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Given the growing challenges of healthcare, including an aging population and increasing shortages of specialized intensive care staff, this systematic review investigates the efficacy of telemedicine in intensive care compared to standard of care (SoC) or any other type or mode of telemedicine on patient-relevant outcomes for adult intensive care unit (ICU) patients. This systematic review follows Cochrane's methodological standards. Comprehensive searches for any controlled clinical studies were conducted in MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, and CENTRAL (up to 18 April 2024, and an updated search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) up to 29 September 2025). Twenty-six studies comparing telemedicine in intensive care to SoC with approximately 2,164,508 analysed patients were identified, including data from one cluster RCT (cRCT), two stepped-wedge cluster RCTs (sw-cRCTs), and 23 non-randomized studies of interventions (NRSIs). No other comparisons were identified. Due to high clinical and methodological heterogeneity among studies, no meta-analysis was conducted. For ICU mortality, one cRCT (15,230 patients) and two sw-cRCTs (5,915 patients) showed heterogeneous results: two found no evidence for a difference, while one favoured SoC (very low-certainty). One sw-cRCT (1,462 patients) reporting overall mortality at 180 days suggested no evidence for a difference between groups (very low-certainty). Data from one cRCT (15,230 patients) and one sw-cRCT (1,462 patients) on ICU length of stay (LOS) showed no evidence for a difference between groups (moderate- and very low-certainty). Quality of life from one sw-cRCT (786 patients) indicated no evidence for a difference (very low-certainty). Six NRSIs reported adjusted data on ICU mortality, two on overall mortality, and three on ICU LOS, with heterogeneous results. High risk of bias and substantial heterogeneity limited the certainty, emphasizing the need for robust, patient-centered research in clinical studies to define telemedicine's role in intensive care and optimize its implementation. Future studies should particularly ensure transparent and comprehensive reporting.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.