Promoting telemedicine in Latin America in light of COVID-19

Abstract

The Faculty of Health Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) was officially designated a ‘World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in eHealth’ on 5 April 2018. The Centre aims to provide support to countries willing to develop new telemedicine services; to promote the use of eHealth; and to study the adoption and use of mobile health in countries of both the Region of the Americas and Europe. On 11 March 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic given the significant increase in the number of cases worldwide. Since then, the Centre has played an important role in addressing COVID-19 by undertaking fruitful cooperative activities. Lockdowns and social distancing in response to the high contagion rate of COVID-19 were the main triggers for a challenging digital transformation in many sectors, especially in healthcare. In this extreme crisis scenario, the rapid adoption of digital health solutions and technological tools was key to responding to the enormous pressure on healthcare systems. Telemedicine has become a necessary component of clinical practice for the purpose of providing safer patient care, and it has been used to support the healthcare needs of COVID-19 patients and routine primary care patients alike. This article describes the Centre’s contribution to the work of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and WHO in supporting Latin American and European countries to develop new telemedicine services and guidance on how to address COVID-19 through digital health solutions. Future actions are also highlighted.

Persisting Barriers to the Adoption of Telemedicine in Latin America After the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This is never the product of the activity of one organization working in isolation. 6 Open-source Solutions To lower the costs of developing solutions and to promote interoperability among them (the ability to dialogue with each other, exchanging data such as patients' EMRs), opensource solutions that are free and cloud based are being used more and more by telemedicine and e-health developers. The advantages of free software over proprietary software are reduced dependence on vendors of proprietary code, access to more tools, the ability to test the software before buying or renting (demos), support from a community of users, access to the code and the ability to adapt it to the medical center's needs, no excessive or useless features, installation of necessary components only, more security and faster troubleshooting, and application updates.…”

Health Innovation & Technology in Latin America & the Caribbean

“…3.8. LAC Health Tech Venture Capital, Number of Funding Rounds, 2010-2023 The LAC health tech venture capital (VC) ecosystem has developed significantly over the past decade; however, it witnessed a sharp correction in 2023 in line with global health VC activity.…”

PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centers: celebrating the achievement of our common goals

“…The special issue also presents evidence on occupational health and violence prevention, including carcinogenic drug exposure among health-sector workers, the protection of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic impact of violence (13)(14)(15). This collection of articles details how the CCs addressed public health needs during the pandemic such as best practices in pandemic preparedness, an anti-infodemic virtual center for the Americas and promoting telemedicine in Latin America (16)(17)(18). In addition, articles showcase how the CCs support PAHO/WHO in addressing neglected tropical and vector-borne diseases, including the elimination of morbidity caused by neglected tropical diseases by 2030, and lessons learned from the implementation of integrated serosurveillance of communicable diseases (19,20).…”