Instituto de Medicina Social, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Cad Saude Publica. 2020;36(5):e00088920. doi: 10.1590/0102-311x00088920. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
COVID-19 has created enormous challenges for health systems worldwide, with the rapidly growing number of deaths and critical patients with pneumonia requiring ventilatory support. Alternative methods to control the spread of the disease such as social isolation, extreme quarantine measures, and contact tracing have been used around the world. However, these measures may not be totally effective to fight COVID-19, in step with the necessary national preparations to meet the new patient care demands. A wide range of digital technologies can be used to enhance these public health strategies, and the pandemic has sparked increasing use of telehealth. This field has grown considerably in Brazil in recent years. Still, despite the intense proliferation of recommendations and rules, until the current pandemic the country still lacked a fully consolidated regulatory framework. The emergence of COVID-19 marks a key moment in the expansion of applications and use of telehealth for improving the health system's response to the current crisis. The article discusses telehealth's contribution to the fight against COVID-19 and the recent initiatives triggered in Brazil as opportunities for the consolidation of telemedicine and improvement of the Brazilian Unified National Health System. The authors conclude that telehealth offers capabilities for remote screening, care and treatment, and assists monitoring, surveillance, detection, prevention, and mitigation of the impacts on healthcare indirectly related to COVID-19. The initiatives triggered in this process can reshape the future space of telemedicine in health services in the territory.
COVID-19 给全球卫生系统带来了巨大挑战，死亡人数和需要通气支持的肺炎重症患者数量迅速增加。为控制疾病传播，全球采用了社交隔离、极端隔离措施和接触者追踪等替代方法。然而，这些措施可能无法完全有效对抗 COVID-19，需要各国做好必要准备，以满足新的患者护理需求。广泛的数字技术可用于加强这些公共卫生策略，大流行也促使远程医疗的使用不断增加。近年来，巴西该领域发展迅速。尽管建议和规则大量涌现，但在当前大流行之前，该国仍缺乏全面整合的监管框架。COVID-19 的出现标志着远程医疗应用和使用扩展以改善卫生系统应对当前危机的关键时刻。本文讨论了远程医疗在对抗 COVID-19 中的作用，以及巴西最近采取的举措，认为这是巩固远程医疗和改进巴西统一国家卫生系统的机会。作者得出结论，远程医疗提供了远程筛查、护理和治疗的能力，并有助于监测、监视、检测、预防和减轻与 COVID-19 间接相关的医疗保健影响。在此过程中引发的举措可以重塑该领土卫生服务中远程医疗的未来空间。
