[New Coronary Pneumonia] "Cloud Clinic" can make future consultations without leaving home?

01 point of view

Written by: Review Editor Room

2020-07-07 07:45

Under the New Coronary Pneumonia epidemic, non-emergency medical services were blocked, and many patients refused to go to the hospital because of fear of contracting the disease in the hospital. The Kowloon Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital developed and piloted the "Cloud Clinic" system to provide online medical interviews to patients with stable conditions to understand their conditions. The system is planned to be gradually extended to other hospitals within the network in the future, and will be studied in conjunction with the HA mobile app "HA Go". If the "cloud clinic" will be popularized in Hong Kong in the future, Hong Kong people will not be able to leave the house without seeing a doctor.

The Kowloon Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital develops a cloud-based clinic system online to provide online consultation services for old patients with stable conditions. All patient data in the picture are fictitious. (Photo by Chen Shuxia)

Does the epidemic create technology?

The "Cloud Clinic" currently allows neurosurgical patients to try it out. The patients install the required programs in advance, and then the nurse calls the patient on the day of the interview to confirm the identity, and then confirms the identity with the patient again before the video consultation with the doctor. The patients who used the service responded positively, saying that the daily follow-up visit takes several hours. Now sitting at home, they also avoid the inconvenience of going to the follow-up visit, so they also expressed the follow-up of the epidemic "Cloud Clinic" welcome.

Mai Kaijun, deputy consultant doctor of neurosurgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, pointed out to the media that the system will continue to be used after the epidemic has eased. Although only eight patients were invited to use the service in the first phase of the plan, the neurosurgery at the Yiyuan Hospital handles about 18,000 a year In the case of patient counting, after calculating the full implementation plan, it is conservatively estimated that there will be about one to 20% of patients in the long run, that is, about 1,800 people will benefit. The hospital will also continue to roll out the "Cloud Clinic" to other hospitals and departments. If patients can sit in their homes and see doctors in the future, it is believed to be a major advancement in medical treatment in Hong Kong.

Helplessly, the "Cloud Clinic" always has its physical limitations, and doctors cannot access the patients, so not all conditions are suitable for cloud-based clinics. (Profile picture)

Desirable direction is yet to be practiced

Helplessly, the "Cloud Clinic" always has its physical limitations, and doctors cannot access the patients, so not all conditions are suitable for cloud-based clinics. The HA and even the Innovation and Technology Bureau can work together to study how to improve the current cloud clinic technology, and make research on which patients the "cloud clinic" is suitable for. At present, the waiting time of the HA's specialist outpatient clinics can be as long as that for ophthalmology patients and may require 141 weeks, or as short as pediatrics for 7 weeks. For example, the cloud clinic can be used in conjunction with traditional outpatient clinics. I believe it can reduce patient traffic and waiting time The time required can also facilitate patients with limited mobility.

However, to promote the new system to meet the daily medical needs, the government's technical and financial support also needs to be two-pronged. At present, the scale of the "Cloud Clinic" is still small, and providing services to eight patients can only be said to be experimental. How to further serve more citizens always depends on government funding to facilitate the citizens. As the service becomes more popular and more patients are used, the privacy of patients must also be taken seriously by the Bureau. The video program Zoom currently being used by the pilot program criticized the privacy loopholes earlier. In April, even more than 350 users’ account information was stolen and resold. When providing the "Cloud Clinic" service, the Bureau may also consider cooperating with the Science and Technology Bureau to develop its own video program, or regularly check whether the video system is safe to prevent the leakage of patient privacy.

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