Governments Need Legal Solution as Telemedicine is Here to Stay, says GlobalData

With over three-quarters of US and European healthcare professionals saying they will continue using telemedicine after the COVID-19 crisis ends, governments are under pressure to make telemedicine a standard mode of care. Countries will need to establish consistent and clear legal frameworks for this technology in order to make permanent the temporary changes implemented to support telemedicine during the pandemic, says GlobalData.

GlobalData’s latest report, “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Case Study: Telemedicine – Physician Perspective”, reveals that 72% of EU physicians were already using telemedicine to assess and treat their patients pre-COVID-19, while the adoption of telemedicine was lagging behind in US with 47% physicians using the technology.

A total of 267 specialists from the US, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Japan, including gastroenterologists, cardiologists, and pulmonologists, participated in online surveys that were fielded from May 27, 2020 to July 2, 2020.