The applications of the Telemedicine in Neonatology and Pediatrics. A narrative revision

BACKGROUND: "Telemedicine" was born from the combination of new communication technologies with traditional personal medical examination modalities, thus configuring a new service. METODOLOGY: All clinical trials, meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials on PubMed were selected through March 30, 2023, for a useful total of 62 studies, for the purpose of narrative revision. RESULTS: In neonatology and pediatrics, there has been an increase in the last decade, especially in Italy, of remote telemedicine consultation activities (via messaging, televisiting, telemonitoring, coaching, and telehealth), especially in terms of follow-up; however, these the advantages come up against a number of limitations: a) the lack of technical knowledge of the tools used for applied telemedicine; b) the costs of supporting, operating and maintaining the material instrumental network; c) the subjective cognitive distortions of the user and/or his or her family, related to the complication or uselessness of the new technologies compared to traditional methods of health care consultation and delivery; d) the non-applicability of the new technological measures related to telemedicine in the case of medical visits that require physical contact; e) a good part of the published studies have structural errors in the construction phase of the research design, effectively vitiating the final result, as happens in the hypotheses of reduced or insufficient population sample with respect to representativeness, conflict of interest with respect to the hypotheses of publicity of the specific IT tool devised and used by the research team, and satisfaction questionnaires of dubious statistical usefulness. CONCLUSIONS: Significant evidence emerges concerning the importance of using new information technology in the service of medicine, albeit with several practical criticalities, to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of health service, both concerning social and economic contexts, for Neonatology and Pediatrics departments.