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Article History

Received: 16 June 2026

Accepted: 17 August 2026

First Online: 9 September 2026

Declarations

Conflicts of interest: SJS received grants and non-financial support from Reactive Robotics GmbH (Munich, Germany), ASP GmbH (Attendorn, Germany), STIMIT AG (Biel, Switzerland), ESICM (Geneva, Switzerland), as well as grants, personal fees, and non-financial support from Fresenius Kabi Deutschland GmbH (Bad Homburg, Germany), grants from the Innovationsfond of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) and EU/European Commission, personal fees from Springer Verlag GmbH (Vienna, Austria) for educational purposes, and Advanz Pharma GmbH (Bielefeld, Germany), non-financial support from national and international societies (and their congress organisers) in the fields of anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine, outside the submitted work. Dr. Schaller holds small amounts of stock in Alphabet Inc., Ascendis Pharma Inc., Bayer AG, and Siemens AG; these holdings have not influenced any decisions regarding his research or this study. SJS reports that he is an associate editor of ICM and that he did not participate in the review or decision-making process for the current manuscript. MW received honoraria (paid to the institution) and travel expense reimbursements from organisers of national symposia and international conferences in intensive care medicine, and was involved in the acquisition of a European Commission research grant (Innovative Health Initiative, Project 101132808). GVdB is funded by the European Union (ERC AdG nr. 101133276). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. BW reports no support for the submitted manuscript. Outside the submitted work, BW received an unrestricted educational grant/cooperation from Teladoc GmbH, institutional consulting fees from B. Braun, personal fees from Masimo for lectures and scientific advisory board participation, institutional fees from Dr. F. Koehler Chemie and Sedana Medical for lectures/educational events, and travel support from Teladoc Health GmbH and Medtronic. BW reports leadership roles with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine as chair-elect of the Rehab & PICS Section, the German Society of Anaesthesiology as Berlin State Chair, and the International Hospital Federation Telemedicine Special Interest Group. The other authors report no conflicts of interest.

Data sharing: No datasets were generated.

Ethics: Not applicable.

Generative AI technology: Grammarly (Grammarly, Inc.) was used for English-language correction. ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-5) and Claude (Anthropic PBC, Claude Opus 4 and 5) were used additionally to support literature searching and reference identification, revise passages, and check internal consistency. All AI outputs were verified against the primary sources and edited by the authors, who take full responsibility for the content of this manuscript, including the accuracy of all references and claims.