Researchers, from WMG’s Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH), believe that remote consulting practices should be adopted widely during the COVID-19 pandemic to help low and middle income countries to help combat the virus, and to provide quality healthcare to patients in the long-term.

By implementing remote consulting practices - such as by mobile phone or mobile app - to maintain services during the COVID-19 pandemic, health services in countries in Africa and South Asia could provide communities permanent access to healthcare that they previously struggled to access.

Remote consulting practices should be adopted widely during the COVID-19 pandemic to help low and middle income countries to help combat the virus and to provide quality healthcare to patients in the long-term. Researchers at the University of Warwick and King’s College London have developed and implemented a training course with researchers at St Francis University College in Tanzania designed to equip nurses, doctors and medical officers in leadership roles with the knowledge and skills to integrate remote consulting into practice in their local service. It is based on research recently published in the journal Digital Health and funded by the Medical Research Council that provides a framework for healthcare leaders to consider how to implement it in their own services.  

Professor Theodoros N. Arvanitis, Director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG at the University of Warwick and one of the co-authors, commented: “Digitally-enabled approaches to remote consultation provide the way forward in the new reality we are living. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we will receive health care in the future, manage our health and wellbeing and go about our daily lives. Remote consultation and digital health solutions provide multiple benefits to individuals and society. Through such approaches, now and in the future, people’s health journeys are better understood and appropriate lifestyle choices can be better tailored and promoted to the individual.”

Researchers from the Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) at WMG, University of Warwick propose that a new system called the Dovetail Digital consent application is favourable, and have analysed it in the paper Evaluation of patient perception towards dynamic health data sharing using blockchain based digital consent with the Dovetail digital consent application: A cross sectional exploratory, published in the journal Digital Health, SAGE Publications.