Telemedicine, other digital tech to improve hospital services amid pandemic – forum

MANILA, Philippines — Hospitals should adopt telemedicine and other digital technologies to improve their services, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic when patients fear going out for in-person consultation or treatment.

This was the thrust of a Globe Business webinar called “Own Progress through Collaboration: Innovating Healthcare with Digital Technologies” that was held on Saturday.

Globe Business, formerly Globe myBusiness, provides digital solutions for client firms.

“The healthcare industry can devise a way to enable doctors to attend to their patients without the risks of exposure [to COVID-19], while patients are provided quality treatment,” Dr. Bu C. Castro, a former president of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA), said.

Citing a study of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Castro noted that hospital visits — including those in emergency rooms — had declined by more than 40 percent due to the pandemic.

He also noted that more than 40 doctors in the Philippines have died of COVID-19.

“[Telemedicine] may not be perfect, but best in the time of pandemic,” Castro said.

Besides addressing the fear of COVID-19 infection, digital innovations can solve other critical problems suchas the doctor-to-patient ratio, according to John Dave Dueñas, chief executive officer of HyBrain, the digital provider of Hospital Information System (HIS).

“Digitizing the health information lays the foundation of the digital health model in the emerging markets,” Dueñas said. “For best outcomes, other healthcare innovations such as telemedicine, health [mobile health] applications, and e-prescriptions will be built around the digitized health information.”

Globe Business itself, according to Manelle Cousart-Suyat, its industry marketing head for health care, offers a modular and digital system for hospitals that automates administrative, financial, and logistical processes.

“A lot of realizations from our healthcare partners dwell on digitization as this can help alleviate stress on the manual process and give them more time to handle cases without having to worry about the administrative aspect,” Suyat said.

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