Considering the increasingly frequent use of telehealth, the lack of training of health professionals in telehealth care, it becomes essential to train and specialize future health professionals, with a formal and structured education at a higher level in the use of telehealth. There is no guideline on the core competencies in telehealth at health care higher education, therefore, a consensus is of paramount importance to externally validate these findings, compiling the core competencies in telehealth.

To identify the core competencies in telehealth needed in the curriculum at higher education.

International modified eDelphi study conducted in 3 rounds. The panel was made up of expert's researchers in telehealth selected on the Expertscape and Pubmed platform, in addition to clinicians, professors, administrators and higher-level coordinators for the snowball sample. The questions were developed by an international steering committee and tested in a pilot test. The first round was presented to the participants with closed questions, with 47 competences distributed in 11 domains, and an open question, the participants judged the degree of agreement on the competencies and suggested new competencies. The consensus was defined with the competencies that reached high agreement (>75%) at the end of the third round.

Total of 100 participants, from 18 different countries, responded to first round suggesting 2 new competencies and 1 new domain. At the end of the third round with 80 participants, we reached a consensus (>75%) with 47 core competencies in a telehealth curriculum distributed in 12 domains: principles of telehealth; care planning and management; assessment, diagnosis, and treatment; adequacy of the environment; professionalism; legal aspects; patient privacy; patient safety; access and equity; patient preference; technology; applicability of telehealth.

Our framework describes the core competencies distributed in different domains necessary in the telehealth curriculum in health care higher education, recommended by a panel of international experts, clinicians and professors. Future research on implementation and effectiveness needs to be carried out to investigate whether the structure provided in this study covers the need to train future professionals.

This curriculum is a first step towards promoting higher education and training of future health professionals in telehealth care. The core competencies in a telehealth curriculum make it possible to guide teaching institutions and health course coordinators, regarding the training of students and contribution in the disciplines that use or may use the telehealth resource, being a first step in the educational development of international telehealth.