New development: ‘Healing at a distance’—telemedicine and COVID-19

Abstract

In extreme circumstances such as pandemics, the presence of patients in hospital emergency departments becomes untenable. Healthcare professionals and organizations worldwide are leaning on technology as a crucial ally to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. This article focuses on the positive impact of telemedicine for helping service provision, from enabling virtual triage to mitigating the negative psychological effects of social isolation. The authors discuss the challenges and opportunities to telemedicine practices. IMPACTThis article explains how telemedicine and other e-healthcare technologies can benefit people, medical staff and healthcare systems. One of the main challenges for telemedicine in many countries is the lack of regulations. The authors call on policy-makers to facilitate wider implementation of e-healthcare technologies, while considering issues of inclusiveness, privacy and data protection. The article informs managers about the use of new technologies. Examples are provided of e-healthcare technologies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example in terms of healthcare capacity and providing support to people affected by quarantine.

Investigating the emerging COVID-19 research trends in the field of business and management: A bibliometric analysis approach

“…Connected digital devices enable both remote work and education. Additionally, chatbots are providing instant life-saving information, partially relieving overwhelmed health systems (Leite et al, 2020). Further, geolocation information systems are helping health workers and researchers to track and map the spread of the virus.…”

“…The public health emergency of COVID-19 confronting global healthcare systems has prompted the development of digital health solutions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic (Panigutti et al, 2020). These digital healthcare systems include telehealth; robust surveillance systems; technology-driven diagnostic and clinical decisionmaking tools; wearable tracking devices to measure physiological parameters like temperature, heart rate, and sleep-duration; and interactive chat services providing information about COVID-19 (Leite et al, 2020). Telemedicine administered through virtual chatbots and webbots is emerging as a viable option for communication and safe medical care.…”

“…In response to the pandemic outbreak, the leaders of many countries decided to save lives before saving the economy, declaring sudden or phased lockdowns in their countries. Policies like "social distancing" and "stay-at-home" were implemented overnight, which severely damaged several businesses across industries (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020;Leite, Hodgkinson, & Gruber, 2020).…”

Transition to Online Higher Education during COVID-19 Pandemic: Turmoil and Way Forward to Developing Country - Nepal

“…However, social distancing brings fear of uncertainty, physical discomfort, loneliness, anxiety, and stress (Xiang et al, 2020) that negatively affect the teaching-learning process at university. The prolonged social distancing creates loneliness, anxiety, depression, and even mental disorder (Leite et al, 2020;Karen & Cathy, 2020). The major problems emerged unexpectedly such as violence, racial and ethnical prejudice, environmental and technological disaster have important psychological aspects to the students (Lerner et al, 2020) and the lifestyle of students have been affected because of fear due to COVID-19 pandemic and Nepalese students are no exception.…”

“…However, the psychological impact of quarantine to students is wide-ranging (Brooks et al, 2020). The prolonged closure of college and students home confinement obviously would harm physical and mental health (Leite et al, 2020). A study found that the COVID-19 pandemic is deemed as a threat, causes fear, anxiety, and uncertainty (Ling & Ho, 2020).…”