Overview of Telemedicine and Sleep Disorders

Telemedicine is about more than simply using audio-visual technology to care for patients, but rather an opportunity to fundamentally improve patient access, quality, efficiencies, and experience. Regarding sleep medicine, it has the potential to drive sleep medicine’s evolution. By enabling care across geographies and facilitating population-based management, sleep medicine is poised to take advantage of telemedicine capabilities. In this introductory chapter, we highlight issues related to sleep telemedicine, while providing a framework in which to approach this transformational journey thoughtfully. We thereby set the stage for the individual chapters in this edition of Sleep Medicine Clinics.