The purpose of this white paper is to educate health care professionals about the evolution of telemedicine (TM) and to propose a hybrid model that leverages the strengths of traditional in-person medicine as well as virtual medicine while maximizing the safety and quality of men's sexual health care.
A literature search focused on the use of TM in urology and men's health was performed through PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science (January 1, 2012-April 26, 2022). Keywords included all known permutations of the terminology used to refer to virtual health, care as well as the terminology used to refer to urologic diseases, issues specific to men's health, and men's sexual health concerns. Publications that emerged after the literature search that met this criterion also were incorporated. Opinion pieces, letters to the editor, meeting abstracts, and conference proceedings were excluded. Additional resources were retrieved, such as governmental technical reports, legislative updates and reviews, and blogs. This search strategy yielded 1684 records across databases after removal of duplicates. Abstracts from the retrieved records were reviewed for relevance. Relevant publications were defined as those that reported data on any aspect of TM use specific to urology, men's health, and/or men's sexual health. If relevance was unclear from the abstract, then the full text of the article was retrieved for a more detailed review. In addition, the published evidence-based practice guidelines relevant to care for erectile dysfunction, Peyronie's disease, ejaculatory dysfunction, and hypogonadism were retrieved. The most common reasons for article exclusions were a focus on TM use in disciplines other than urology and the absence of data (ie, opinion pieces). After exclusions, a total of 91 publications remained and constituted the evidence base for this paper.
The journal of sexual medicine. 2024 Feb 28 [Epub ahead of print]
Mohit Khera, Helen L Bernie, Gregory Broderick, Serge Carrier, Martha Faraday, Tobias Kohler, Lawrence Jenkins, Daniel Watter, John Mulhall, Omer Raheem, Ranjith Ramasamy, Rachel Rubin, Aaron Spitz, Faysal Yafi, Hossein Sadeghi-Nejad
Scott Department of Urology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States., Department of Urology, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN 46202, United States., Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida 32224, United States., Surgical Department /Urology Division, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, H4A 3J1, Canada., Four Oaks Consulting, Berryville, VA 22611, United States., Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905, United States., Department of Urology, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, United States., Morris Psychological Group, P.A., Parsippany, NJ 07054, United States., Urology Service, Department of Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10022, United States., Section of Urology, Department of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States., Desai Sethi Urology Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, United States., Department of Urology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007, United States., Orange County Urology Associates, Laguna Hills, California, CA 92653, United States., Department of Urology, University of California Irvine, CA 92660, United States., Department of Urology, NYU Langone Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10017, United States.