Video consultation from smartphone or through health apps, among other new channels of communication between doctor and patient, have become a form of care that is gaining more and more supporters in both public and private medical centers and hospitals. Experts believe that with such digitization they win in dynamism and efficiency in all specialties.

A few decades ago, a family doctor’s home visit, including in emergency cases, was a common occurrence. Now this only happens with dependent people or in cases of extreme severity and urgency if the patient is unable to move due to the incident.

From home visits in just a few years and in unprecedented ways, it has evolved into more digital and operational solutions that improve the efficiency of healthcare services and increase patient satisfaction.

Now more and more patients themselves resort to this.Digital channels for specific questions such as chronic disease monitoring, emergency consultation, or requesting an assessment from specialists such as a dermatologist, allergist, or even a geriatrician.

One of the main factors that have contributed to the development of telemedicine in recent years has been the situation caused by SARS-CoV-2. In fact, according to the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (SEMFyC), covid has become an accelerated step forward in a process that was expected in the medium term and has achieved its normalization among citizens. However, despite the progress and strengthening of telemedicine in many areas of healthcare, there is still a long way to go.

One area where telemedicine appears to have more opportunities in the short term is primary care (PC). According to SEMFyC, the National Health System (NHS) needs about 10,000 more family doctors to provide replacements for the next retireesit is one of the oldest specialties (a large percentage of professionals aged 60 and over) and has serious replacement problems.

“The PC model that the current management system has led us to does not allow us to consider care that goes beyond the model of office medicine and the bureaucratization of medical workers, when the population has real health problems, such as an increase in the number of people with multiple chronic diseases and their therapeutic reconciliation or, in part, as a result of an aging population exacerbated by two years of a pandemic, an increase in non-communicable diseases,” said its President, Maria Fernandez.

But, in addition to consultations in the Presidential Administration, there are other areas where it is necessary to speed up digitization. An example of this is the emergency department, which is currently under a lot of pressure due to the collapse of primary care.

The gradual introduction of new technologies as a result of the drive to innovate makes it easier for this type of area, traditionally marked by a strong face-to-face presence, to move towards a “physical” experience where the fusion between the physical and digital worlds becomes the key to success.

Examples of emergencies that choose this type of environment: university hospitals such as Infanta Elena or Niño Jesusa center that is currently promoting a pan-European project aimed at finding solutions that harmonize and improve emergency services in the event of an accident, attack, natural disaster or pandemic.

Projects like these show that there are already leading hospitals that are betting big on digitization and paving the way forward, as well as accelerating the digital transformation of the healthcare system towards a physical-to-digital mix.

In the field of specialties, some, such as dermatology, were among the first to use teleconsultations long before the pandemic.

In fact, leading centers such as the International Dermatology Clinic have been using teledermatology for many years when it comes to the safe diagnosis of skin conditions, where the quality of the photographs combined with the combination of clinical data allows for safe and reliable assessments. .

Other specialties in which telemedicine is used with high success rates are, for example, psychiatry for patient monitoring; Hematology, in cases where remote control of coagulation is possible; even in oncology to control and monitor patients treated in day hospitals.

It is also increasingly common in pulmonology as COPD patients can now be monitored remotely. In addition, in the specialty “Cardiovascular Diseases” when monitoring chronic patients. All this is beneficial and allows you to resolve situations, doubts and fears not only of patients, but also of those who care for them.