"Most patients up to 70 or 75 years old have a mobile phone, and this opens up a lot of possibilities"

 

Telemedicine is here to stay, as one of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three years on, this new setting has led to certain benefits for healthcare professionals and patients, as well as many challenges and questions. Is it possible to improve patients' digital literacy? Can technology contribute to healthcare workers' emotional well-being? And how can the data obtained from different devices be used?

These are some of the questions that the new Ethics, Equality and Digital Tools for Improving Health (e-RLab) research group at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) eHealth Center is seeking to answer. We talked about its importance, objectives and challenges with Oriol Yuguero, a researcher at the eHealth Center and leader of the e-RLab research group.

Yuguero is also a researcher in emergency medicine at the Biomedical Research Institute of Lleida (IRBLleida), and the head of the Emergency Service at the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital, also in Lleida. He has also been a course instructor on the UOC's Master's Degree in E‑Health for the last three years, and he received the Young Researcher Award from the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) in 2021. His extensive experience as a doctor and researcher makes him the ideal person to lead this new team.

 

Telemedicine is here to stay, as one of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three years on, this new setting has led to certain benefits for healthcare professionals and patients, as well as many challenges and questions. Is it possible to improve patients' digital literacy? Can technology contribute to healthcare workers' emotional well-being? And how can the data obtained from different devices be used?

These are some of the questions that the new Ethics, Equality and Digital Tools for Improving Health (e-RLab) research group at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) eHealth Center is seeking to answer. We talked about its importance, objectives and challenges with Oriol Yuguero, a researcher at the eHealth Center and leader of the e-RLab research group.

Yuguero is also a researcher in emergency medicine at the Biomedical Research Institute of Lleida (IRBLleida), and the head of the Emergency Service at the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital, also in Lleida. He has also been a course instructor on the UOC's Master's Degree in E‑Health for the last three years, and he received the Young Researcher Award from the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) in 2021. His extensive experience as a doctor and researcher makes him the ideal person to lead this new team.

After five years of experience with the various research areas of the eHealth Center, it's important to remember that the development of digital health leads to ethical challenges that we have to take into account. First, in order to try to ensure that the benefits of digital health reach everyone and to prevent a digital divide.

We aim to encourage reflection on the ethical dilemmas that can arise as a result of digital health, and to engage patients and professionals in a response to them.

Because we have to make sure that nobody is left behind in the wake of the progress made as a result of them. We have to involve patients in the design of apps, so that they are useful and provide answers to real problems. We must also try to make sure that they can lead to greater empowerment for patients.

Promoting fairness is important, because digital health can be an effective tool for promoting an appropriate use of resources and improving their distribution. It can also facilitate access to the system.

The population's level of literacy is gradually rising. Fifteen years ago, most patients over 65 years old didn't have a mobile phone. Most people up to 70 or 75 years old have one today, and they're able to use them. This can open up many possibilities.

We hope to promote telemedicine in regions with low population densities in particular. Telemedicine shouldn't become a substitute for a personal healthcare relationship, but instead a complement to it that provides access to professionals who people wouldn't otherwise have access to on a face-to-face basis. We can't allow telemedicine to increase the distance between professionals and patients.

The main benefit is greater convenience for patients. This is very important, and it's been shown that, whenever it's possible, recovery at home saves on resources and improves the patient's quality of life. Follow-ups of vital signs and check-ups of the patient's overall condition can sometimes take place online, avoiding the need for patients to travel to healthcare centres.

Above all, digital resources and increased literacy among professionals. Training is crucial, especially for family doctors, who are the professionals who have the closest relationships with patients and the people around them. Digital health must be seen as an ally rather than an enemy.

It's been suggested that all healthcare professionals should have access to a forest-bathing experience to help them relax during their working day. As we can't build forests in hospitals, we're going to try to recreate these and other relaxing scenarios using immersive virtual reality. By doing so, we hope to improve emotional well-being, and to reduce burnout as a result.

The situation we're facing in terms of burnout among healthcare professionals is alarming. The care they provide may deteriorate if they're suffering from burnout. This is especially true among younger professionals.

We need to look for a multidisciplinary approach to address this problem, which is endemic among healthcare workers worldwide. The first step is to look for tools that help people determine if they're experiencing burnout, so that they can ask for help and start to solve the problem.

Data provide an objective tool for finding out the extent of the problem, and seeing whether the strategies we're implementing have the anticipated effect. The data obtained in projects with professionals will be anonymous, and will only be used in research projects.

We are a group with very varied profiles. We have primary healthcare professionals, including doctors and nurses, as well as professionals for whom digital health can be a major challenge, such as emergency and palliative care professionals, paediatricians and geriatricians.

We have professionals who work with vulnerable groups, who can benefit from a type of healthcare that enables patients to stay at home and come to the hospital only in very specific and necessary situations. We hope that the members' clinical and healthcare profiles will enable us to provide answers and practical and useful tools for all professionals.