A Systematic Review of Teleophthalmology Services Post-COVID-19 Pandemic in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States of America, and Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background : This systematic review of teleophthalmology services in Australia, the United States of America (USA), Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK) during the COVID-19 pandemic is aimed to evaluate changes in teleophthalmology, comparing them to New Zealand (NZ). Methods: A literature search of electronic databases Scopus, Proquest, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and Google was conducted using search terms: telemedicine, ophthalmology, teleophthalmology/teleophthalmology, and COVID/COVID-19/coronavirus/covid-pandemic. Studies describing teleophthalmology services created in response to COVID-19 restrictions from March 1, 2020, to January 31, 2024, were analyzed. Results: Of the articles, 37 describing 29 discrete teleophthalmology services were included. There were 15 services in the USA, seven in the UK, two in Canada, two in Australia, and three in NZ. The models of care in the USA were well described, and teleophthalmology was used for general, external, anterior segment, neuro-ophthalmology, and oculoplastic consults, as well as for grading of fundus images in the emergency department setting. In the UK, teleophthalmology was used for general eye care, oculoplastics, and pediatric ophthalmology. In Australia, teleophthalmology was used for postglaucoma surgery monitoring of Intraocular Pressure. In NZ, teleophthalmology was used for general eye consults and triaging, but no formal models were described. Conclusion: COVID-19 offered a unique opportunity for re-examination and expansion of teleophthalmology services globally. Video-based and home-screening teleophthalmology services are feasible but have limitations. Investing in multidisciplinary and community-based technology partnerships can create more equitable teleophthalmology care models (to complement and, when necessary, replace traditional in-person consults), within existing frameworks, making eye care more accessible and efficient.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".