Telemedicine takes center stage in the era of COVID-19

Submitted by rruggia on Tue, 05/11/2021 - 13:57
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sciencemag.org (06.11.2020) Telemedicine comes in many shapes and sizes and offers many advantages over the traditional healthcare visit, but until recently, it was largely underutilized. The COVID-19 pandemic quickly changed that—only time will tell if telemedicine’s new popularity will last.  On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, radically changing the way medicine is practiced. In the span of a few weeks, as quarantining and social distancing became the norm, in-person medical visits plummeted, suddenly thrusting telemedicine from the wings of medical care to center stage. “The pandemic created a huge public health issue, but the biggest problem wasn’t that COVID-19 patients couldn’t get care—it was that people without the disease couldn’t access their normal care,” says Michael Okun, professor and chair of neurology at the University of Florida.

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