Telemedicine is going to be a big part of healthcare in the future, and that’s a good thing
Madrid’s regional government has recently come in for criticism over its plans to extend the use of telemedicine, with a huge protest march on Sunday attracting more than 200,000 people. Leaving aside concerns that the right-wing administration is restructuring the primary care system is essentially creeping privatization of healthcare, criticizing the provision of health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunication technologies as somehow second-rate or worse, irresponsible, reveals a remarkable level of ignorance about the potential of technology to help doctors improve our health.
If one good thing emerged from the pandemic, it has been telemedicine: at a time when billions of people were locked down around the world and couldn’t access hospitals or health centers, doctors and patients found themselves talking by phone or videoconferencing for the first time. The pandemic standardized the use of videoconferencing to such an extent that the acceptance of the system was very high and the results were more than satisfactory.
As in many other countries, Spain’s public health system is overstretched and under-resourced: medics are poorly paid and work in increasingly stressful conditions. But that doesn’t hide the fact that…
