Warpinski Chloe, Turner Kea, Hong Young-Rock
Department of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
MD/PhD Program, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
J Gen Intern Med. 2025 May;40(7):1542-1544. doi: 10.1007/s11606-024-09262-z. Epub 2024 Dec 9.
The USA has some of the highest costs of medical care in the world. Telemedicine has been proposed as an affordable alternative to traditional in-person care, increasing access to medical services. Praised as a significant innovation and opportunity to expand access to medical care, telemedicine services have rapidly expanded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This viewpoint discusses the equity implications of the expansion of direct-to-consumer telemedicine-only medical care or care, which takes place entirely in the virtual realm, often with no requirement for a previous patient-provider relationship. We propose an approach to digital health that looks beyond digital literacy and access to technology to consider systemic challenges to equitable implementation.
美国的医疗保健成本位居世界前列。远程医疗被提议作为一种比传统面对面医疗更经济实惠的选择，以增加医疗服务的可及性。远程医疗服务被誉为扩大医疗保健可及性的一项重大创新和机遇，在新冠疫情之后迅速扩张。本观点讨论了仅面向消费者的完全在虚拟领域进行的远程医疗或护理服务扩张所带来的公平性影响，这种服务通常不要求患者与医疗服务提供者之间有既往关系。我们提出一种数字健康的方法，该方法超越数字素养和技术获取，来考虑公平实施方面的系统性挑战。
