Introduction

Intensive care unit (ICU) survivors, particularly with a protracted length of stay such as those mechanically ventilated for COVID-19 pneumonitis, experience lasting physical, cognitive and psychological challenges that impede their recovery and functional capability.1 Survivors also experience substantial symptom burden including breathlessness, extreme fatigue and pain.2 Together, the healthcare issues faced by ICU survivors are frequently referred to as postintensive care syndrome (PICS). Family members acting as informal caregivers experience substantial psychosocial burden and in some cases loss of employment and financial difficulties due to their informal caregiver commitments.3 Unfortunately, fragmentation in healthcare delivery following transfer from the ICU to an in-patient ward location, and following hospital discharge, is all too common.4 This fragmentation results in mismatches in the healthcare services needed and those received, information loss, treatment omissions, hospital readmission, and poor patient and family experience, all of which may interfere with recovery.5–7

Despite the well-established recovery challenges faced by ICU survivors and their family members, development of a recovery plan and provision of follow-up recovery services are highly variable, and in some jurisdictions extremely limited.8 Individualised recovery goal setting, although the standard of care across many areas of rehabilitation9 is not routine for ICU survivors. Virtual care and telemedicine may provide a solution to bridge the fragmentation prevalent across arbitrary healthcare system boundaries and thus enable individualised …