Integrated Investigation Results

TELEHEALTH 5

LITERATURE REVIEW.

COVID-19 pandemic has led to a tremendous development in telehealth services around the world. This has primarily been owed to necessities behind the social distancing necessities and the requisite to prevent transmission of the pandemic. Though telehealth has been existing before, COVID-19 pandemic has increased awareness and adaption of telehealth by many healthcare providers, patients and the society at large. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic Scotland experienced a 1000% increase in video consultations, during a 2 week period in March 2020. The proportion of consultations through videoconference in Australia, increased from 0.2% (February 2020) to 35% (April 2020) provided through videoconference and telephone. In USA, Telehealth programme empowered 1300 health specialists to be telehealth-ready. the percentage of telehealth consultations in USA increased from less than 1% to 70% of the total visits Within a month, this allowed >1000 video visits a day.  An Australian survey on telehealth use reported >80% of the participants considered telehealth service as of good quality or excellent (Thomas et al., 2020).

During COVID-19 pandemic epidemic, mental health surveys where done online in China with the aid of applications such as WeChat and TikTok. Chinese government launched an online consultation network carried out through the internet or on telephone consultations. During the COVID-19 pandemic Iranian Society of Radiology delivered teleconsultation and teleradiology services through social media in response to shortage of onsite thoracic radiologists. In the USA staff use remote health technology in developing staffing plans and carrying out healthcare billing to protect patient’s health and safety. According to a study carried out in the United States electronic health records and phone calls facilitates screening and treating patients without face to face visits, this improves decision making amongst healthcare workforce in emergency and ambulance care (Monaghesh, 2020).

The Australian government announced an AUS $2.4 billion healthcare package to fight COVID-19 with AUS $100 million promised to fund telehealth consultations through video or phone and on March 30, 2020, it announced financing of AUS $669 million a universal telehealth programme for all the citizens of the country enabling healthcare access through telephone or video from home. On March 10 Scotland announced that they were accelerating an investment of US $1.5 million plus US $10 million implementation costs to support video consultations. The United States announced development of telehealth services through telephone and videos, allowing people to use the services over 6 months in platforms such as Facetime and Skype (Fisk, 2020).

REFERENCES.

Fisk, M., Livingstone, A., & Pit, S. W. (2020). Telehealth in the context of COVID-19: Changing perspectives in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Preprint). doi:10.2196/preprints.19264

Monaghesh, E., & Hajizadeh, A. (2020). The role of Telehealth during COVID-19 outbreak: A systematic review based on current evidence. doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-23906/v2

Thomas, E. E., Haydon, H. M., Mehrotra, A., Caffery, L. J., Snoswell, C. L., Banbury, A., & Smith, A. C. (2020). Building on the momentum: Sustaining Telehealth beyond COVID-19.  Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 1357633X2096063. doi:10.1177/1357633x20960638