Telehealth: The future is now in allergy practice

Abstract

Less than 5% of the patients needed to be referred to do in-person visits. Telemedicine is an already validated tool. 1-4 The COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to implement telehealth-focused processes to provide safe and convenient patient care, and both patients and allergists seem willing to continue to use it. 5 M. Morais-Almeida and C. S. Sousa participated in study design and conception and drafted the manuscript. All authors provided critical review of the manuscript and approved the final draft for publication.

The use of remote care during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic a perspective of Portuguese and Spanish physicians

“…The proportion of physicians using video consultations (20%) was lower than expected considering other studies, being at the lower range limit observed at allergy/immunology clinics in the period post-COVID-19 (17% to 74%) [9][10][11][12]. Yet, if we considered results per medical specialty, allergists are closer to the expected range (32%), while pulmonologists and paediatricians performed video consultations much less (7% and 0%, respectively).…”

“…In a report of the Portuguese TeleHealth National Centre, analysing the use of video consultations between 2017 and 2019, only paediatrics were among the most engaged specialties, but mostly restricted to paediatric cardiologic [18]. Despite the low percentages, we can speculate the frequency of video consultations increased during COVID-19 pandemic, as it has been seen across distinct health care systems [19], including the Portuguese National Health Service [12,20]. However, with the data collected at only one-time point, we are not able to assess how this proportion evolved.…”

“…It is possible that the same pattern occurred in Portugal and Spain, nevertheless these data are not yet available. To our best knowledge only a study in a Portuguese private allergy centre has reported the use of video consultation (15%-74%) in April and May [12].…”

What do asthmatic patients think about telemedicine visits?

“…Every patient might be at risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure (6) and to reduce such risk, as it successfully occurred in many other medical specialties around the globe (7)(8)(9)(10)(11), allergy centers implemented VV as an alternative to in-person visits (12). As telemedicine programs were nationally applied, we became curious about the acceptability and satisfaction of asthmatic patients with this type of virtual visits.…”

Using Telemedicine to Care for the Asthma Patient

“…Telemedicine usage will continue to climb as long as providers, patients, and administrators are satisfied with it [ 52 ]. Many patients have a positive outlook on the use of telemedicine for asthma care [ 51 , 53 , 54 ]. In a study done by Portnoy and colleague [ 55 ], 37% of allergy patients were more satisfied with a telehealth visit when compared to an in-person appointment and no patient was less satisfied.…”