Use of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic (research up to July 2021)
Citation: Garfan S, Alamoodi AH, Zaidan BB, et al. Telehealth utilization during the Covid-19 pandemic: A systematic review. Computers in Biology and Medicine. 2021;138:104878.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Malaysia.
What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a great strain on health systems. Evidence on how technologies, such as telehealth, are used may help to address and mitigate the impact of the disease and to improve the resilience of health systems.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for articles about the application of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. They restricted their searches to articles published in English and did the most recent search 13 July 2021. They included 86 articles.
What was found: Telehealth impacted many areas of health care including disease and population control, technology implementation and strategies, as well as the delivery of urgent and non-urgent operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The authors noted various challenges and benefits related to the application of telehealth and provided recommendations relevant to multiple perspectives.
Implications: The authors concluded that proper integration of telehealth as an emerging technology to assist patients, healthcare providers and policymakers can improve existing applications and promote the development of high-quality healthcare practice. They stated that as the use of telehealth becomes normalized, new regulations should be created by governments and healthcare institutions to help facilitate the relationship between healthcare workers and patients.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of socioeconomic status and language, mentioning the potential to improve access to care for underserved populations (e.g. minority, low-income and non-English-speaking patients).
This summary was prepared by Joly Ghanawi, checked by Grace Meng, and finalized by Mike Clarke.