Telemedicine has been around for a while but was slow to catch on. COVID-19 has accelerated its prevalence and popularity, as patients and physicians seek to reduce exposure risk.
Sykes, a business processing outsourcing provider, surveyed 2,000 people across the United States from March 19 to March 20 to see how COVID-19 has changed their attitudes and use of telemedicine.
Despite the fact that over half of respondents (51.85%) were aware of services and nearly three-quarters (73.29%) felt they had been adequately informed to use them, less than a quarter (19.5%) had used them.
The pandemic has hastened people availing themselves of at-home doctor visits via video or phone, particularly if they are concerned that they have COVID-19, with 73.2% saying they would use telemedicine to be assessed.
But telemedicine covers all disciplines of medicine and while it cannot substitute completely for in-person videos, both patients and physicians can get a lot out of such visits, particularly if they have a few easy to acquire pieces of technology on hand. PCMag has a guide to what you need to know and might want to have on hand for a visit, which could become much more prevalent now that the pandemic has caused 59.85% to consider the use of telemedicine in the future.