Improving the Quality of Virtual Medical Treatment & Medicine Delivery Experience in Taiwan through Telemedicine

Abstract

Telemedicine allows the running of certain health services through telecommunication technologies, regardless of time and distance, and minimises unnecessary contacts during pandemics. Despite the rapid development and the integrated technologies, Telemedicine in Taiwan did not truly come into service until early May 2022 when COVID-19 spread widely across the nation.

A survey was carried out to evaluate the degree of Telemedicine familiarity in Taiwan. Among 476 feedback, 35% of the participants were medical personnel and 65% were from the public. Data showed that about 48.5% considered themselves to be unfamiliar with Telemedicine and 25% believed that they have a good Telemedicine foundation. Only 8% of the participants claimed they have Telemedicine experiences. Two findings came to our attention when evaluating the causes of the data results. Firstly, not only do most of the Taiwan populace, the medical personnel show concerns about Telemedicine. The main reason is being unacquainted with the concepts behind it and the technologies involved. The second part moves on to the difficulty of delivering medicine to remote areas. The current practice of home delivery of medicine can only be executed by pharmacists. Consequently, the shortage of human resources has become a problem, much less the delivery to the remote regions. Thus, the following solutions have been suggested.

Solutions to the first issue:

1. Establishment of Professional Telemedicine departments


2. Telemedicine & Patience Safety Precautions

Solutions to the second issue:

1.  Medicine delivered by the Third-party logistic industry


2. Set up Medicine Lockers


3. UAV delivery of medicine

Living in the post-pandemic era and beyond, Telemedicine is certainly becoming a leading trend. However, with an immaturely developed system, Taiwan is no doubt facing diverse obstacles when putting Telemedicine into service. Therefore, some feasible solutions are provided in this study, in the hope that Telemedicine can benefit more people.