Özen Figen, Kaynar Alptug H, Korkut A Kubilay, Teker Açıkel Melike Elif, Kaynar Z Dilsun, Kaynar A Murat
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Haliç University, Eyüp, Istanbul, Turkey.
Columbia University, New York, NY, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Dec 5;19(12):e0314986. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314986. eCollection 2024.
The healthcare systems of low and middle-income countries suffer from lack of resources that could be remedied by employing novel care strategies such as telemedicine [1]. Here, the hypothetical impact of delivering telemedicine care on environment and society in three busy cardio-vascular clinics in Istanbul, Turkey, is examined. The study exploits demographics, wages, productivity, and patient-specific data to develop a hypothetical telemedicine framework for the Turkish healthcare landscape. Specifically, the distance traveled and travel time to receive care using location of the clinics and patients addresses seeking care are tabulated. Data from August 3, 2015, to January 25, 2023 involves 45,602 unique encounters with 448 unique diagnoses recorded for the patient encounters, where the patients in the top 5% of the most common diagnoses traveled 23.82 ± 96.3 km to reach the clinics. Based on our model, telemedicine care for cardiovascular diseases would have saved 656,258 km if all patients were to take the first visit in person followed by telemedicine visits in lieu of face-to-face care for all visits. The travel-associated carbon footprint and wage losses for in-person care is calculated and exploiting telemedicine could have saved approximately 30% carbon footprint and prevented approximately $503,752.8 wage loss. It is possible that telemedicine could ease the burden on patients, environment, increase access, and prevent the wage losses caused by unnecessary hospital visits.
低收入和中等收入国家的医疗保健系统缺乏资源，而采用远程医疗等新型护理策略可以弥补这一不足[1]。在此，研究了在土耳其伊斯坦布尔的三家繁忙的心血管诊所提供远程医疗护理对环境和社会的假设影响。该研究利用人口统计学、工资、生产力和患者特定数据，为土耳其的医疗保健格局开发了一个假设的远程医疗框架。具体而言，根据诊所和患者寻求护理的地点，列出了接受护理所行驶的距离和旅行时间。2015年8月3日至2023年1月25日的数据涉及45,602次独特的就诊，记录了448种针对患者就诊的独特诊断，其中最常见诊断中排名前5%的患者前往诊所的距离为23.82±96.3公里。根据我们的模型，如果所有患者首次就诊亲自前往，随后进行远程医疗就诊以代替所有面对面就诊，那么心血管疾病的远程医疗护理将节省656,258公里。计算了面对面护理的旅行相关碳足迹和工资损失，采用远程医疗可节省约30%的碳足迹，并防止约503,752.8美元的工资损失。远程医疗有可能减轻患者负担、对环境的影响，增加就医机会，并防止不必要的医院就诊造成的工资损失。
