Teleradiology can contribute to quality care when teleradiologists communicate and collaborate with referring physicians, have real-time access to patients’ medical records, and consult for hospitals that have error detection and correction systems in place.

Telemedicine intensive care units enable off-site physicians to cover many care centers, thereby increasing efficiency and access to care, although their use also raises concerns about varying standards of care, unreliable equipment, the erosion of trust in the patient-physician relationship, and the adequacy of the informed consent process.

For telemedicine to be properly integrated into everyday care in the twenty-first century, we need to advance beyond twentieth-century policy.

Ensuring the ethical acceptability of telemedicine requires avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions and protecting the patient-physician relationship, patient privacy, and patient-centered care.

Arguments that mistrust about information security will deter patients from embracing telehealth care ignore patients' willingness to take on risk in the pursuit of health benefits and the role physicians will play in encouraging adoption.

The Indian Health Service has been a leader in implementing telehealth programs and technologies that increase access to and efficiencies in care, particularly in the fields of mental health and ophthalmology.

Telemedicine's potential to advance humanitarian efforts can be realized through further research into best practices, codification of responsibilities and liabilities, counseling and informed consent prior to the creation of electronic health records, strengthening of IT infrastructure, and the integration of an informatics curriculum into residency training programs.

Medical schools should integrate health IT and biomedical informatics into their formal curricula. The George Washington University Emergency Medicine Telemedicine and Digital Health Fellowship was designed to train graduate physicians to use telemedicine in their clinical and research work.

Although cross-state licensure is currently a barrier to the widespread adoption of telemedicine, policies that would expedite it or remove the requirement to be licensed where patients are located have been proposed by the Federation of State Medical Boards and the federal government.

Ideally, telepsychiatry treatment should include collaboration with patients’ primary care physicians. One way to facilitate the collaboration is for patients to have videoconference appointments with their psychiatrists in the primary care clinic.