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Hanoi-based Medical University Hospital is the first medical facility in Vietnam to use the telehealth system. After four months, doctors have consulted more than 300 patients in different small infirmaries. The hospital’s live broadcasts on social networks attracted colleagues and a great deal of public attention.
This model was implemented by the hospital in the Mekong Delta Province of An Giang in 2017. The project has been implemented in hospitals and medical facilities for delivery. The hospital’s physicians installed machines with stethoscopes and the ability to broadcast newborn babies' heart-lung sound Wi-Fi into one software; then this app will filter pathological heart sounds.
For these cases, the doctor of Hanoi Medical University Hospital will listen to the heart sound again. If a problem is suspected, the child will have an echocardiogram to screen. As of 2019, the project has screened 30,000 children and found nearly 1 in 1,000 children with congenital heart diseases.
The telehealth system's online consultation will take place completely differently with the participation of many doctors from hospitals and all medical information and data are publicly available. Thus, through Telehealth, not only patients benefit, but many trainee doctors, even other specialists, also learn and understand that disease. More importantly, when people have a chance to attend the consultation, they will understand the medical profession and have more trust in physicians in small infirmaries.
Currently, many patients have appendicitis or thyroid cysts, a coronary intervention that can completely be performed at the provincial hospital, but they still arrive in big hospitals for examination and treatment. Therefore, when Telehealth has been implemented, few patients came to big hospitals. At that time, doctors in big hospitals can expand the number of patients for medical examination and treatment and treat more difficult diseases.
Currently, only seven hospitals out of 161 district hospitals have registered to use Telehealth. In the future, the satellite hospital system would be upgraded in hospitals in communes.
The implementation of this technique is a very new thing. Patients are used to having to visit the doctor in person. Now they need to get used to using technology to be able to monitor their health.
During the Covid-19 epidemic outbreaks, the Telehealth system is most effective in helping to reduce the rate of inpatients as well as reduce the proportion of referrals from grassroots hospitals to large hospitals; especially reducing the patient's re-examination rate.
