When Digital Meets the Doctor's Office

A sweeping JMIR review finds that blending telehealth with in-person care made European health systems more resilient during COVID-19.

19 Jun 2026

European health systems that wove telehealth into conventional care pathways during the Covid-19 pandemic performed better than those that treated digital tools as temporary fixes, according to a scoping review published in JMIR on April 30, 2026.

Researchers from Radboud University Medical Center, the University of Galway, and the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health analysed hybrid care implementations across multiple European contexts. Led by Natalia Sanchez Villalobos and co-author Tessa van Loenen, the study was updated through January 2026 before publication. Across the cases examined, telehealth systems managed chronic disease, acute consultations, and a range of other clinical functions without requiring a separate physical infrastructure for each.

The central finding carries weight beyond its pandemic setting. Embedding digital health within care pathways, rather than deploying it alongside them, is what produced genuine adaptability, Sanchez Villalobos and van Loenen concluded. Systems that kept digital tools peripheral struggled to respond when pressure on physical capacity peaked.

For health technology companies, the review offers institutional validation at a useful moment. European regulators and procurement bodies are reassessing infrastructure priorities following pandemic-era disruptions, and evidence-grounded research of this scope feeds directly into those deliberations. Hybrid models hold a measurable operational advantage: they reduce strain on physical facilities while preserving continuity of care for patients, including those in remote or underserved areas where in-person access is structurally limited.

Post pandemic policy momentum across the region continues to push in this direction. Whether health systems act on that momentum by redesigning care pathways, or simply add digital components at the margins, will determine how durable the gains are.