The Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires began to implement telemedicine services in 2017, concluding that year with 1,000 teleconsultations. In 2019, the remote consultations of the Argentine clinic reached 4,000 throughout the year; a leap that, while significant, would not even come close to what would come later. “The pandemic arrived and telemedicine was boosted. In March 2020, 25,000 remote consultations were made, and in May 125,000”, says Fernando Plazzotta, head of IT for the Community of the venue. “In 2019 we made 4,000 teleconsultations per year and in May 2020, 4,000 per day. This great impulse required a great challenge”, adds the also coordinator of the Telemedicine program of the Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires.
But this exponential increase in remote consultations experienced by the Argentine health center was not an isolated case, since the boost of digital tools in the health sector has been enormous since the arrival of COVID-19.
So much so, that this year The Economist defined 20 trends left behind by the pandemic and one of them is the migration of the medical system to digital thanks to remote technologies. Indeed, the way to access health was one of the areas that changed radically after the coronavirus, generating unprecedented growth in the sector.