The World Health Organization defines telemedicine as “an interaction between a health care provider and a patient when the two are separated by distance”. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a dramatic shift to telephone and video consulting for follow up and routine ambulatory care for reasons of infection control. Short Message Service (“text”) messaging has proved a useful adjunct to remote consulting allowing transfer of photographs and documents. Maintaining non-communicable diseases care is a core component of pandemic preparedness and telemedicine has developed to enable (for example) remote monitoring of sleep apnoea, telemonitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, digital support for asthma self-management, remote delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation. There are multiple exemplars of telehealth instigated rapidly to provide care for people with COVID-19, to manage the spread of the pandemic, or to maintain safe routine diagnostic or treatment services.Despite many positive examples of equivalent functionality and safety, there remain questions about the impact of remote delivery of care on rapport and the longer-term impact on patient/professional relationships. Although telehealth has the potential to contribute to universal health coverage by providing cost-effective accessible care, there is a risk of increasing social health inequalities if the “digital divide” excludes those most in need of care. As we emerge from the pandemic, the balance of remote versus face-to-face consulting, and the specific role of digital health in different clinical and healthcare contexts will evolve. What is clear is that telemedicine in one form or another will be part of the “new norm”.

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The reason for this review based on the results of many meta- analyses is the great assessed difference in the methods of most studies in e-Health, telemedicine and tele-rehabilitation. It consists of different understanding of new terms, using different hard- and software, including criteria, different methodology of patient’s treatment and its evaluation. This status suggests that first of all m-Health/e-Health requires a unique ontology of terms using and methodology of studies comparing. In this review we try to describe shortly the most significant points of modern e-Health field of medicine. The basic parts include methodology of review formation, tele-communication implementation results, tele-education, interactive questioning, tele-consultation, telemedicine diagnosis, tele-monitoring, rehabilitation and tele-rehabilitation, gamification, acceptability of mobile electronic devices and software in e-Health and planning studies. At the end of the review the new ontological structure of digital medicine is presented.

It is a challenge to keep abreast of all the clinical and scientific advances in the field of respiratory medicine. This article contains an overview of laboratory-based science, clinical trials and qualitative research that were presented during the 2022 European Respiratory Society International Congress within the sessions from the five groups of the Assembly 1 – Respiratory clinical care and physiology. Selected presentations are summarised from a wide range of topics: clinical problems, rehabilitation and chronic care, general practice and primary care, electronic/mobile health (e-health/m-health), clinical respiratory physiology, exercise and functional imaging.