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This post was shared on behalf of Alan Chen.
Nearly one year after COVID-19 was first identified in the United States, the virus continues to challenge our country as a whole. With cases and deaths rising at an alarming rate, the pandemic has especially burdened our healthcare system in ways like never before. As hospital systems continue to stretch their care capacity every day to treat more patients, there now exists a new inaccessibility to healthcare for COVID-19 unaffected individuals with other medical problems than the virus.
To fill this gap, individuals have increasingly begun to adopt telemedicine platforms to continue to get the medical attention they need during this pandemic, and I believe telemedicine is here to stay even after the pandemic. In fact, during the pandemic, from January to early June 2020, telehealth adoption increased by nearly 50%; this quickly increased reliance of individuals on telemedicine due to the pandemic has kickstarted a societal shift towards greater adoption of digital health and forecasts immense growth in the sector in the coming years.
Telemedicine offers a degree of accessibility and convenience that the healthcare sector hasn’t seen before, connecting patients to physicians in just a matter of minutes. With individuals more readily adopting these digital health treatment options, I believe telemedicine will continue to grow in our society primarily due to its accessibility, affordability, and reduction of healthcare-acquired infections.
The move to telemedicine during this pandemic has highlighted a key advantage of digital health systems that is their ease of accessibility. Many telemedicine platforms allow patients to request on-demand visits from a physician anytime of the day, allowing patients to receive personalized care centered around their schedule.
Additionally, telemedicine enables both patients and physicians to interact seamlessly from the comfort of their own homes, further increasing the availability of care for patients when compared to traditional doctors’ offices and hospitals which often require appointments and bear long wait times.
For this reason, throughout the past decade, hospitals have already started a move towards more telehealth treatment options with the percentage of hospitals using telemedicine in patient check-ups rising from 35% to 76% from 2010 to 2017.2 The move to telemedicine even before the pandemic emphasizes the increased accessibility of care digital health offers to patients. They are able to connect with a physician in minutes and ask any medical questions they may have without having to drive and wait hours at a time for medical attention.
In the midst of a global pandemic, healthcare has fallen apart in many ways: hospitals nearing capacity with COVID-19 patients, front-line healthcare workers scheduled for double even triple shifts, and individuals struggling to receive medical attention for their health
problems. However, through this struggle, the rise of telemedicine has revolutionized the accessibility of healthcare around the country.
The accessibility, affordability, and infection safety of telemedicine provide individuals with a new healthcare platform, connecting patients and caregivers with ease. This pandemic has changed our global understanding of healthcare in ways never imagined, but through all the struggles healthcare has adapted, and one of the driving forces is telemedicine.