The Future of Telehealth

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The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the growth of remote delivery, with face-to-face industries being catalysed into virtual services, from remote schooling and higher education to healthcare and fitness. Telehealth is one of the key virtual services that people have started to access. The pandemic has created a need for low and no-contact healthcare for many vulnerable sectors, such as aged care, as well as the many thousands of people in self-isolation and quarantine.

Practitioners from psychologists to physiotherapists have turned their surgeries and consultation rooms into virtual appointments, delivering healthcare via videoconferencing platforms. Telehealth has also been seen as a way to solve rural GP shortages, with the West Coast DHB (District Health Board) employing an Auckland-based GP to provide non-urgent telehealth appointments via phone, email and video conferencing.

But at the same time, there are concerns that New Zealand’s public health system lacks the capacity to enable more widespread use of telehealth. 

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) has identified a need for "development of supportive systems and processes, scheduling, training, guidance and communication strategies for clinicians and patients to expand the use of telehealth as part of routine delivery of care."

Visit-based healthcare is the most expensive form of care delivery and physicians the most expensive and scarce resource. By extending the healthcare system through telehealth, using communication and collaboration technologies, a much more scalable system can be developed. Telemonitoring is also becoming more accessible due to the rise in people with wearable devices that monitor various physical symptoms and activity.

One of the problems with virtual meetings and consultations is that it becomes harder to pick up on visual cues, which can be a vital part of a doctor’s assessment of a patient. High quality video and audio is vital to enable effective virtual consultations, so patients feel engaged and practitioners don’t miss vital information. Many vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, may have vision and hearing impairment issues that require specialised communication technology.

While telehealth consultations and technology are unlikely to fully replace face-to-face care in the short term, they have an integral part to play in increasing access to health services. The futuristic vision of a remote-controlled robot performing an appendectomy, with surgeons thousands of miles away from the patient, may be some decades away. But by enabling more accessible medical services, even as the need for social distancing declines, telehealth will play a very significant role in the future of New Zealand’s healthcare.

Source: Bill Zeng, Poly's APAC Chief Technology Officer, 17 November 2020

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