# A Review of Converging Technologies in eHealth Pertaining to Artificial Intelligence
## 2 Overview of Healthcare Applications
### Telemedicine  
The 2019 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic impacted most aspects of daily life, but the healthcare sector especially was extremely affected. During this challenging period, the field of telemedicine has seen a great expansion both in its use and in its functionalities. Arguably, the most significant benefit of telehealth applications is the fact that patients are not required to travel back and forth. If the consultation can be carried out remotely, commuting to the clinic or hospital is at least impractical and possibly even pointless. Especially during the pandemic, patient waiting times became significantly more unpleasant due to mask wearing and social distancing policies, which meant that waiting rooms could not be filled entirely and many patients had to wait outdoors, regardless of the weather conditions. In situations where patients had to travel great distances even before an initial consultation, the added strain on their bodies could have posed a health risk. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Authors** & **Work Description** & **Results** & **Technologies Employed** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[36]} & Application capable of & Using a technology as accessible as a tablet & \\  & remotely screening patients & camera, this remote screening solution & \\  & for physical frailty & extracts kinetic features and calculates a & \\  & & frailty index; results were compared with & \\  & & other solutions; dataset built from & \\  & & 11 patients. & \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[37]} & A review of Parkinson’s & Remote management and automated & \\  & disease management systems & assessment of Parkinson’s disease & \\  & at home & wearable systems & \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[38]} & A review of IoT in-home & Presented works offer a wide view over IoT & \\  & health monitoring systems & implementations for in-home health & \\  & & monitoring systems & \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[41]} & & The system can handle multiple types of & \\  & & sensors through an Arduino board; a & \\  & Secured telehealth system for & Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ is used for & \\  & IoT capable of biosignals & processing the data; uses 4 Physiobank & \\  & diagnosis & databases: MIT-BIH Arrhythmia, MIT-BIH & \\  & & Normal Sinus Rhythm, BIDMC Congestive & \\  & & Heart Failure and MIT-BIH AF. & \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[42]} & & Researchers analyzed tweets and concluded & \\  & & there were 4 times more tweets relating to & \\  & Mental health and substance & mental health and substance abuse during & \\  & abuse telehealth & the pandemic compared to before; data & \\  & & cleaning was challenging because some & \\  & & originated from organizations; selected & \\  & & 10,689 tweets. & \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{[43]} & Review relating to telehealth & \\  & in pediatric endocrine & Precision medicine; growth hormone & \\  & disorders & therapy; diabetes patient care. & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Telehealth applications. In large regions such as Western Australia, teleophthalmology solutions were offered to rural patients while different artificial intelligence approaches were experimented with to identify age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma [44]. In a review that spanned over 3 years of PubMed articles related to teleophthalmology, including the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of telemedicine was assessed with regard to the reduction in manpower, limiting direct patient contact, more efficient medical information storage, and real-time diagnosis [45]. Telemedicine applications have begun assisting ambulance crews because the emergency services deploy rapid response teams consisting of nurses and volunteers, but not doctors.