Barriers to Access to Telemedicine during COVID-19, a Professional and Governmental Challenge
Abstract
Dear editor:
The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection isolated the world for months and impacted morbidity and mortality rate figures. 215,047,649 cases and 4,480,486 deaths have been reported worldwide as of August 27, 2021. In Colombia, 4,899,085 cases and 124,567 deaths were reported as of the same date (1). Mandatory isolation was among the health measures to reduce propagation. This situation drove all sectors to transform. With respect to the health care system, telemedicine (TM) was quickly implemented as one of its strategies.
The term TM was introduced in 1970 as “healing at a distance,” defined by the World Health Organization as “The delivery of health care services using information and communication technologies for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease” (2). The objectives of TM are to improve the quality of health care services, reduce transportation costs, reduce wait times and provide more opportunities to attend to geographically distant areas. In addition to the above, it allowed decreasing patients and health care professionals’ exposure to the infection in pandemic context (3,4).
References
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Martínez-García M, Bal-Alvarado M, Santos-Guerra F, Ares-Rico R, Suárez-Gil R, Rodríguez-Álvarez A, et al. Telemedicina con telemonitorización en el seguimiento de pacientes con COVID-19. Rev Clin Esp [Internet]. 2020;220(8):472-479. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rce.2020.05.013
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