Telemedicine and Covid-19: the Task Force report

The ongoing health emergency, and especially the shock caused by "Phase 1", made it clear how important and how urgent a collective effort is in the direction of telemedicine. Without prejudice to the fact that eHealth is a higher and more noble objective, really making use of the opportunities that technological innovation offers today, taking a step towards Telemedicine (therefore towards simple remote healthcare) could deliver enormous advantages for the management of this and future pandemic events.

Telemedicine, progress is needed These are the words of the Task Force for the Covid-19 emergency within the report of the "subgroup of work 5 ”(Pdf) dedicated to technological solutions for medical remote assistance:

Telemedicine can be considered as one of the key components for improving citizens' health. In fact, telemedicine platforms are ideal for dealing with various challenges that health systems face in response to global infectious disease epidemics. [...] Furthermore, these uses of telemedicine reduce human exposure (between healthcare professionals and patients) to a series of infectious diseases and ensure that medical supplies are reserved for patients who need them. [...] Telemedicine can help mitigate this risk by minimizing the amount of face-to-face interactions between healthcare professionals and patients.

Despite all the virtues of this process, the report indicates the significant delays on the part of the National Health System in grasping all the possibilities offered by the remote service, thus indicating the need to work on this front to take important steps forward in the Country. The report was made to collect proposals for action which could be taken quickly: 504 cards received , which has come to a close selection analysis that was completed with 5 names which will be now taken into consideration:

Co4Covid-19 (Dedalus Italia SpA) the Smart Axistance Covid-19 Control (ENEL X Italy) eLifeCare Covid-19 (Exprivia SpA) LazioDoctor (LAZIOcrea SpA) Ticuro Reply (REPLY SpA) The analysis of the task force is not decisive and, above all, recommends that prior to the adoption of any solution (both at a national and regional level) and perform a narrow technical assessment in terms of cybersecurity and personal data management. You can proceed, in short, and to the most beneficial solutions for the management of the emergency have been identified. However, the path is still long and at this point it is not clear if it will be useful already for the current outbreak or whether these assessments will be revived especially in view of a future development of telemedicine in our country.