Speech

 Telehealth in the Covid 19 pandemic.

Link to video poster: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ruF_re-fApQYH4pqQQIcjm0_7WZF2QtD/view?usp=sharing

By Lisa Christian.

During the COVID-19 pandemic physical separation between clinicians and patients was encouraged to help reduce the risk of community transmission of the virus (1).

To achieve this separation telehealth services were used as an alternative method of health care delivery.

This led to healthcare being delivered by phone or video, or asynchronous technologies such as web-based communications, messaging and monitoring.

Australia had well established telehealth services before the pandemic, but because of the pandemic it became an important alternative for healthcare. Canada, NZ and USA are similar. They then increased use, ten-fold. Government then supported telehealth with Medicare, when stricter lockdowns started in place.

Questions related to organisational and professional contexts, postulated mechanisms, changes in services, patient experiences and acceptance of telehealth services, sought to understand what constraints on organisational deployment of telehealth services exist. Other questions probed the interaction between professional cultures and the operation of telehealth services? For example:

• Has telehealth been legitimised by clinicians, management and technologists in your organisation?

• How has confidence been built in telehealth services?

• How have professional relationships been maintained?

• What sorts of resources have been important operating telehealth services since the beginning of the pandemic?

• What sorts of changes supported the increased acceptance of telehealth services?

• How has the modality, scope, volume and quality of healthcare delivery using telehealth services changed?

• What changes have there been in the patient experience?

• Have the needs of vulnerable populations been considered?

• Is the provision of remote consultations by your organisation or unit now routine?

Recent research into telehealth services has found that continued operation, development, or sustainability of telehealth is contingent on and sustained by interactions between contexts and telehealth services through four key mechanisms, which:

• legitimise practise based on explicit and implicit sociotechnical codes including strategies, guidelines, and clinical routines;

• build confidence through accepting technology, management of the risks, and creation of trust in practise;

• build relationships between stakeholders; and

• acquire resources, such as information and communications technology, human resources, and funding [(25), unpublished doctoral thesis, Flinders University].