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Medical teleconsultation has become since Covid-19 a more practical way to treat yourself. It avoids displacement and protects each other. Today, a new UK study explores the environmental impact of online consultations.
Medical teleconsultations could become an essential element of sustainable ecology according to a new study from the University of Oxford. According to results published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, they would reduce the carbon footprint.
In the aftermath of the Covid 19 pandemic, remote consultations have multiplied in order to protect each other. Today, they are deeply rooted in our daily lives. From now on, three-quarters of attending physicians offer remote consultations with their patients. Faced with this democratization of the virtual, a question arises: what is the impact of teleconsultation on environmental sustainability in health care? A team of researchers from the University of Oxford set out to carry out a study to answer this question.
Fewer trips
The researchers reviewed 1672 published studies and selected 23 that looked at a range of virtual consultation equipment and platforms in different clinical conditions and services. Thanks to telemedicine appointments, including video and telephone visits, patient travel time for face-to-face appointments has decreased significantly; thus, virtual consultation can be an effective way to achieve environmental sustainability goals. These studies used different methods and approaches to estimate carbon savings, but despite their methodological inconsistencies, all studies concluded that virtual consultation significantly reduced carbon emissions.
However, most previous research has not assessed the criteria of patient fit: such as clinical indication or even organizational infrastructure affecting the acceptance, use and growth of virtual consultations.
An environmental impact
“Health systems urgently need to become more environmentally sustainable. Our review clearly shows that virtual consultations offer a way to help with this. While the adoption and spread of virtual consultation should be considered alongside to a range of system, organizational, clinical and patient factors, when done well and at scale, they offer significant potential for carbon savings, primarily (but not only) through to travel reductions. The pandemic has driven a big shift towards virtual care – this is likely to continue, and our findings suggest it will help mitigate the effects of climate change.”added Professor Shaw, from the University of Oxford in the Press release.
Nevertheless, other environmental impacts such as electronic waste generated by teleconsultations must be assessed, hence the importance of additional work at the end of this study. According to the researchers, there is a need for virtual counseling services to analyze the emission reduction potential and weigh it against the potential benefits and risks (e.g. adverse events, missed diagnoses) of providing or scaling up these services. To see rapid and pronounced change, the researchers advise that funders and evaluators systematically report on carbon footprint modeling.