Role of Social Media and Telemedicine in Diagnosis &amp; Management of COVID-19; An Experience of the Iranian Society of Radiology

Taheri, Morteza Sanei; Falahati, Farahnaz; Radpour, Alireza; Karimi, Vahid; Sedaghat, Abdolrasoul; Karimi, Meghdad

doi:10.34172/aim.2020.15

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…There has been a steep rise in the shift towards the use of telemedicine platforms because of the social distancing and lockdowns implemented across various countries around the world. However, there is limited literature on the usage of such telemedicine systems and various specialties like radiology[ 11 ], psychiatry[ 12 ], obstetrics[ 13 ], palliative medicine[ 14 ] and dermatology[ 15 ] have described their experience during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India had released a set of Telemedicine guidelines during the beginning of the lockdown period.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tele-consultations and electronic medical records driven remote patient care: Responding to the COVID-19 lockdown in India

Das

Rani

Vaddavalli

2020

Indian J Ophthalmol

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Purpose: To describe the experience of tele-consultations addressed at the centre of excellence of a multi-tier ophthalmology hospital network in India during the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown. Methods: This cross-sectional hospital-based study included 7,008 tele-consultations presenting between March 23 rd and April 19 th 2020. A three-level protocol was implemented to triage the calls. The data of patient queries were collected using a Google Form/Sheets and the tele-calls were returned using the patient information retrieved from the electronic medical record system. Results: Overall, 7,008 tele-calls were addressed, of which 2,805 (40.02%) patients where a clinical-related query was answered were included for analysis. The most common queries were related to redness/pain/watering/blurring of vision (31.52%), closely followed by usage of medications (31.05%). The majority of the queries were directed to the department of cornea (34.15%), followed by retina (24.74%). Less than one-fifth of the patients were from the lower socio-economic class (16.08%) and one-fourth were new patients (23.96%). The most common advice given to the patient was related to management of medications (54.15%) followed by appointment related (17.79%). Emergency requests requiring further evaluation by an ophthalmologist accounted for a small percentage (16.36%) of patients. Conclusion: Tracking of tele-consultations and access to patient information from the electronic medical records enabled a timely response in an ongoing lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current experience provided valuable insights to the possibility of managing patient follow-up visits remotely in the future.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tele-consultations and electronic medical records driven remote patient care: Responding to the COVID-19 lockdown in India

Das

Rani

Vaddavalli

2020

Indian J Ophthalmol

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“…Using telemedicine and social media could partially prevent this workload. (47) In a pandemic such as COVID-19, the emergency physicians as the frontline healthcare providers should be aware of ED triage, facilities, and isolation policies, to deal with a surge of suspected cases. The design of appropriate devices and procedures for pre-triage, diagnosis, and isolation of suspected and confirmed cases should be the final goal.…”

Section: The Role Of Laboratory Data In Triagementioning

confidence: 99%

Coronavirus disease 2019: a revolution in biological triage in the emergency setting

et al. 2020

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Triage is a familiar concept for all who work at the forefront of the treatment of patients and the emergency medical staff know their duty in different situations including crisis and epidemics. Accordingly, the coronavirus outbreak has also a major effect on the emergency department (ED) as it changes the routine ED function. Our main question was what are the main triage challenges in the recent pandemic and how we could overcome these challenges? Therefore, a search of the main Web databases was performed for articles published till May 1st, 2020 using various related keywords. In various steps, the title, summary, methodology, results, and discussion of the selected studies were assessed to find out the recent triage strategies in the COVID-19 outbreak. Hence, all the available and related English review articles, case series, and experimental studies were evaluated. Among 200 studies initially reviewed, 59 met the study criteria for the final assessment. COVID-19 puts a significant load on public health services and potential damage to social and psychiatric situations by marked morbidity and mortality. In line with the various presentations and according to the changing of the COVID-19 epidemic to a worldwide pandemic problem, the management and treatment protocols changed several times. Accordingly, the local and even global hospital protocols were changed as well. The first simple concept of coronavirus triage in an emergency department is the separation of COVID-19 infected patients from the others. This approach has been practiced around the world. Changing the ED layout from a usual triage or fast track set to an isolated room is necessary for such a pandemic situation. It is very important to consider staff communication and the application of PPE. All the efforts should be taken to protect patients as well as the medical staff from unnecessary exposure and infection; this serves to keep the health facilities working well in the outbreak and diffusion of SARS-CoV-2.

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“…Distance is no longer a prerequisite for telemedicine (6, 10, 11, 39) but a necessity to deliver health care (54)(55)(56)(57)(58). Key changes were made to existing telemedicine policies globally after the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 (10,11,39,57,58).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Telemedicine creates opportunities for international collaborations, datasharing, and technology-transfer among health-care providers (1, 27, 41-43, 55, 56). ICT infrastructure for telemedicine has been expanded to social media (36,39,55,56,59) to cope with the dazzling speed of information-sharing and evolving technology. Issues such as privacy, confidentiality, data security, and ownership (16, 60) must be refined, particularly when it involves international data-sharing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite these shortcomings, most SEA countries invest in digital health solutions due to their potential in the digital economy (8,28,30,34,35,59,64,65) and its usefulness during the COVID-19 pandemic (2,6,(54)(55)(56)(57)(58). The lack of ICT infrastructure in most SEA countries has been overcome by using existing resources and free mHealth Apps offering affordable consultation fees (59,(65)(66)(67).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Telemedicine Guidelines in South East Asia—A Scoping Review

Sabrina

Defi

2021

Front. Neurol.

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Background: Telemedicine is a useful tool to deliver healthcare to communities in low- to high-income countries, especially in the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic era. Guidelines on telemedicine would assist healthcare providers in delivering healthcare services based on local circumstances.Objective: To explore and compare guidelines on telehealth and telemedicine in South East Asian countries.Methods: Electronic databases such as Google, PubMed, and Cochrane reviews were searched for articles using keywords such as “telemedicine” OR “telehealth” OR “eHealth” OR “telemedis” AND “guidelines” AND “South East Asia” OR “Malaysia” OR “Singapore” OR “Indonesia” OR “Thailand” OR “Vietnam” published up to 2020. Inclusion criteria were full articles and gray materials (i.e., policy statements, advisories, blueprints, executive summaries, and circulars) related to telemedicine guidelines. No language restrictions were imposed. Only the first 100 Google searches were included for eligibility based on its relevance to telemedicine guidelines. Exclusion criteria were abstracts, duplicate publications, blogs, news articles, promotional brochures, conference proceedings, and telemedicine projects unrelated to telemedicine guidelines.Results: A total of 62,300 articles were identified through the search engines (Google 62,203, PubMed 77, and Cochrane 20) and six articles from additional sources. Sixty-eight full-text articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria, but only 24 articles contained some form of guidelines on telemedicine: Indonesia (nine), Malaysia (seven), Singapore (five), Thailand (two), and Vietnam (one). There were six laws, six advisory guidelines, five policy statements, and two circulars (regulations) issued by either the Ministry of Communication and Multimedia, Ministry of Health, or Medical Councils from the respective countries. Issues addressed were clinical governance (100%); information and communication technology infrastructure (83.3%); privacy, storage, and record-keeping (77.8%, respectively); ethics and legal (77.8%); security and safety (72.2%); definitions and applications of telemedicine (72.2%); confidentiality (66.7%); licensing (66.7%); identification (55.6%); cost of information and communication technology infrastructure (55.6%); reimbursement (16.7%); mobile applications (11.1%); and feedback and choices (5.6%). The Singapore National Telemedicine Guidelines contained the most domains compared with other guidelines from South East Asia.Conclusions: Although there can be no “one-size-fits-all” telemedicine guideline, there should be a comprehensive and universal telemedicine guideline for any country to adapt based on the local context. Details on patient-identification, data ownership, back-up, and disposal; transregional cybersecurity laws and ways to overcome the limitations of telemedicine compared with face-to-face consultations should be outlined clearly to ensure uniformity of telemedicine service and patient safety.

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Role of Social Media and Telemedicine in Diagnosis & Management of COVID-19; An Experience of the Iranian Society of Radiology

Cited by 16 publications

References 5 publications

Tele-consultations and electronic medical records driven remote patient care: Responding to the COVID-19 lockdown in India

Tele-consultations and electronic medical records driven remote patient care: Responding to the COVID-19 lockdown in India

Coronavirus disease 2019: a revolution in biological triage in the emergency setting

Telemedicine Guidelines in South East Asia—A Scoping Review

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