Telehealth on the rise, page-1233

Thank you applesanddiamonds, for your kind remarks.

Funny as I reflect on why I write here at all, in the first place. I'm usually not a vocal person at all. I'd rather read, than write. I've done a bit research on hotcopper intermittently for a good ten years. But I never thought I would write. And I haven't, until the last month or so.

What prompted me to start writing is, funny enough, COVID-19.

As a doctor, I'm always guided by the principle of "First, do no harm"

A month or so ago, when COVID-19 started to emerge as a serious issue, I asked myself, am I doing harm to my frail and elderly patients by allowing infected cases into the clinic and seeing them?

My patients came to me to get better..... But then, will they leave with a problem much worse than the ones they came to me for? Even fatal?

Mortality of COVID-19 in the elderly population >80 y.o. is ~15%. Very high indeed.

I thought to myself, I need to get the message out there, that there must be a better way to see infected cases. We still need to see infected cases. We can't pick and choose. It's not ethical, but I prefer not to see them at the clinic. Because it's harmful!

Then I thought, yes, we have telehealth and ResAppDx. That's what we need!

The likelihood of doing harm to my non infected elderly frail patients would be minimized by using telehealth to assess and treat the suspected/confirmed cases at their own home!

What about the problem of possibly doing harm to the infected cases if we know telehealth is subpar to face and face consultations? Afterall, the problem with telehealth, without access to the stethoscope, is well known. That is the great limitation of telehealth up to this point.

But now that we have ResAppDx, we can be more certain than ever that we're doing no harm, even to the "infected cases" via telehealth. We can be more confident that we can provide optimal care, to not only non infected cases, but the suspected / confirmed cases too.

All sounded too good to me to keep quiet. So I started writing. I wanted to push for the optimal solution - telehealth + ResappDx. I feel the world needs this solution NOW.

It all stems from my deep rooted desire to "do no harm".

I am confident a lot of doctors do think like me. They would have this deep rooted desire to "do no harm" too.

Bit of a blurb. Thanks for taking to time to read!