TY  - JOUR
AU  - Wong, Mark Yu Zheng
AU  - Gunasekeran, Dinesh Visva
AU  - Nusinovici, Simon
AU  - Sabanayagam, Charumathi
AU  - Yeo, Khung Keong
AU  - Cheng, Ching-Yu
AU  - Tham, Yih-Chung
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/2/19
TI  - Telehealth Demand Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Top 50 Most Affected Countries: Infodemiological Evaluation
JO  - JMIR Public Health Surveill
SP  - e24445
VL  - 7
IS  - 2
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - infodemiology
KW  - telehealth
KW  - telemedicine
KW  - internet
AB  - Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to urgent calls for the adoption of telehealth solutions. However, public interest and demand for telehealth during the pandemic remain unknown. Objective: We used an infodemiological approach to estimate the worldwide demand for telehealth services during COVID-19, focusing on the 50 most affected countries and comparing the demand for such services with the level of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure available. Methods: We used Google Trends, the Baidu Index (China), and Yandex Keyword Statistics (Russia) to extract data on worldwide and individual countries’ telehealth-related internet searches from January 1 to July 7, 2020, presented as relative search volumes (RSV; range 0-100). Daily COVID-19 cases and deaths were retrieved from the World Health Organization. Individual countries’ ICT infrastructure profiles were retrieved from the World Economic Forum Report. Results: Across the 50 countries, the mean RSV was 18.5 (SD 23.2), and the mean ICT index was 62.1 (SD 15.0). An overall spike in worldwide telehealth-related RSVs was observed from March 11, 2020 (RSV peaked to 76.0), which then tailed off in June-July 2020 (mean RSV for the period was 25.8), but remained higher than pre-March RSVs (mean 7.29). By country, 42 (84%) manifested increased RSVs over the evaluation period, with the highest observed in Canada (RSV=100) and the United States (RSV=96). When evaluating associations between RSV and the ICT index, both the United States and Canada demonstrated high RSVs and ICT scores (≥70.3). In contrast, European countries had relatively lower RSVs (range 3.4-19.5) despite high ICT index scores (mean 70.3). Several Latin American (Brazil, Chile, Colombia) and South Asian (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan) countries demonstrated relatively higher RSVs (range 13.8-73.3) but low ICT index scores (mean 44.6), indicating that the telehealth demand outstrips the current ICT infrastructure. Conclusions: There is generally increased interest and demand for telehealth services across the 50 countries most affected by COVID-19, highlighting the need to scale up telehealth capabilities, during and beyond the pandemic. 
SN  - 2369-2960
UR  - http://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/2/e24445/
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/24445
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33605883
DO  - 10.2196/24445
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/24445
ER  -