Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Sep 20, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 14, 2020
Telehealth Demand Trends in COVID-19: An Infodemiological Evaluation of the Top 50 Most Affected Countries
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to urgent calls for the adoption of telehealth solutions. However, public interest and demand for telehealth during the pandemic remains unknown.
Objective:
We used an infodemiological approach to estimate the demand for telehealth services during COVID-19 globally, focusing on the 50 most-affected countries and comparing the demand for such services with the level of information-communications technology (ICT) infrastructure available.
Methods:
We used Google Trends, the Baidu Index (China), and the Yandex Keyword Statistics (Russia) to extract data on worldwide and individual countries’ telehealth-related internet searches from 1st January to 7th July, 2020, presented as “Relative Search Volumes” (RSV, ranging 0-100). Daily COVID-19 cases and deaths were retrieved from the World Health Organisation. Individual countries’ ICT infrastructure profile were retrieved from the World Economic Forum Report.
Results:
Across the 50 countries, the mean RSV was 18.5±23.2, and the mean ICT index was 62.1±15.0. An overall spike in worldwide telehealth-related RSVs was observed from 11th March 2020 (RSV peaked to 76.0), which then tailed off in June-July 2020 (mean RSV for period=25.8), but remained higher than pre-March RSVs (mean=7.29). By country, 42 (84%) manifested increased RSVs over the evaluation period, with the highest observed in Canada (RSV=100) and the United States (RSV=96). When evaluating associations between RSV and ICT index, the US and Canada demonstrated both high RSVs and ICTs (≥70.3). In contrast, European countries had relatively lower RSVs (ranging 3.4-19.5) despite high ICTs (mean=70.3). Several Latin-American (Brazil, Chile, Colombia), and South-Asian (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan) countries demonstrated relatively higher RSVs (ranging 13.8-73.3) but low ICTs (mean=44.6), indicating that the telehealth demand outstrips the current ICT infrastructure.
Conclusions:
There is generally increased interest and demand for telehealth services across the 50 countries most affected by COVID-19, highlighting the need to scale up telehealth capabilities, during and beyond COVID-19. Clinical Trial: NIL
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