Abstract
Artificial intelligence, digital health, telemedicine, portable sensors, virtual reality - these new technologies will completely change the way patients and doctors perceive healthcare. Digital health already has a huge impact on the way doctors work, it is very important what tasks it allows them to take on. There are many repetitive and monotonous tasks that most medical professionals do not like to do. Digital health solutions can make them better, faster and cheaper. These tasks usually do not require any creativity or empathy. The process of digital technologies entering healthcare is more complex than simply saying that artificial intelligence (AI) or robotics will take over medical work and activities.
We live in unprecedented times. The new strain of coronavirus is spreading at an alarming rate, so much so that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on March 11. However, this strain of COVID-19, which is thought to have originated either by transfer from a non-human host or evolved into a pathogenic strain in the human population, is very real and causes suffering at every level of society. In particular, its virulent nature puts the elderly and the immunocompromised at higher risk.
The development of the pandemic contributes to the widespread use of telemedicine. Prior to the pandemic, only 1 in 10 American patients used telemedicine services, according to a study by J.D. Power. But with COVID-19 the use of telehealth applications is increasing to 158% in the United States [3, 5]. The coronavirus pandemic has caused an explosive increase in the need for digital services, including those related to health and medicine. Many medical organizations (public and private) are starting to use telemedicine platforms and have announced the opening of free remote consultations between patients and doctors on COVID-19.
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Gonchev, V., Vasilev, V. (2022). Application of Digital Health and Telemedicine to Deal with COVID-19. In: Sotirov, S.S., Pencheva, T., Kacprzyk, J., Atanassov, K.T., Sotirova, E., Staneva, G. (eds) Contemporary Methods in Bioinformatics and Biomedicine and Their Applications. BioInfoMed 2020. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 374. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96638-6_6
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