Abstract
The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic reminds us of the importance of telemedicine in providing needed healthcare with minimizing the risk of close contact cross-contamination. This review aims to define the role of telemedicine services in preventing, detecting, controlling, and treating diseases during the outbreak of COVID-19 across the world. A comprehensive search of PubMed, Google Scholar, NCBI, and JMIR covering the period from 1990 through June 2021 was performed. Articles highlighted the roles and contributions of telemedicine in providing healthcare services during COVID-19 outbreak were identified, and only those published in English were considered for this study. Telemedicine has become an essential component of patient care in reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Telemedicine can mobilize all forms of healthcare potentials to reduce disease spread, guide patients to the appropriate level of treatment, ensure the safety of providing healthcare services, and ultimately reduce mortality rates in the COVID-19 outbreak. There was an increased use of telemedicine during the pandemic as it acted as the first line of protection for doctors in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. COVID-19 has forced doctors to shift quickly from traditional "face-to-face" appointments to telephone or video consultations and it paved the way for digital transformation.