Ministry orders increased use of Telehealth to deal with COVID-19 spike
The Ministry of Health has requested COVID-19 treatment hospitals across the country to increase use of Telehealth, a system for remote health care consultation and support, to deal with the spikes in COVID-19 cases.
The COVID-19 hospitals must, without delay, put into use the Telehealth system, connecting their different departments and units, and with other hospitals.
Hospitals designated as national and regional intensive care units were asked to urgently set up a remote health consultation network with the COVID-19 treatment hospitals on digital platforms to provide instructions on classifying patients based on their conditions, delivering emergency and intensive care, and proposing hospital transfers.
Locally-run hospitals must immediately digitally connect with national and regional ones to receive periodic and emergency consultations.
The Ministries of Health, and Information and Telecommunications on August 8 jointly launched the national technology centre for COVID-19 prevention and control, and announced that all district medical units had become connected with the Telehealth system.
Local medical workers are now able to seek advice from leading experts about how to best treat patients in critical conditions, particularly those with COVID-19, via Telehealth, instead of transferring them to higher-level hospitals.
This will help ease overloads at centrally-run hospitals and minimise direct contacts between patients and medical workers. In the long run, it will enable all people to register for online medical consultations.