Pediatric Teleheath: Opportunities Created by the COVID-19 and Suggestions to Sustain Its Use to Support Families of Children with Disabilities

Abstract

Aims

Telehealth is being rapidly adopted by physical and occupational therapists in pediatrics as a strategy to maintain services during the COVID-19 crisis. This perspective presents a mix of theoretical and practice perspectives to support the implementation of telehealth. Although research evidence is just emerging, there is sufficient indication to believe telehealth is effective. However, which telehealth strategies are best for which children and families, and which intervention goals, are not yet clear.

Methods

We discuss how different telehealth strategies (e.g. videoconferencing, emails, phone calls, online programs) are being used to address specific intervention goals. Comments from therapists using telehealth and examples of practices in different context and with different populations are provided. We discuss how newly adopted telehealth practices could be included in future hybrid service delivery models and programs, as well as factors influencing the decision to offer face-to-face or online interventions.

Conclusion

Although telehealth has been implemented quickly as a response to a health care crisis, and is not a one-size-fits-all intervention, we believe it offers great opportunities to increase the accessibility, cost-effectiveness and family-centredness of our services, to best support families of children with disabilities.

Keywords:

• eHealth
• pediatric
• service delivery
• telerehabilitationrehabilitation

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all co-investigators and study participants who have, throughout the years, participated to our different telehealth projects through the years. They have contributed to the development of our understanding of how best to use telehealth to support families. Special thanks also to all the presenters and participants the first eHealth Summit for therapists in pediatric rehabilitation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor change. This change do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The first author is funded by a salary award from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé. The second author is funded by a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship – New Zealand

Notes on contributors

Chantal Camden

Chantal Camden is an Associate Professor at the school of Rehabilitation at Sherbrooke University. She is a physiotherapist by background and completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences from the University of Montréal and her Post-Doctoral training at CanChild. Her research focuses on developing, implementing and evaluating evidence-based interventions and service delivery models for children with disabilities. She is also involved in using multimodal web-based services to develop community-based services. She was part of the organizing committee of the first eHealth Summit for therapists in pediatrics.

Mindy Silva

Mindy Silva is a Paediatric Physiotherapist with a master's degree in child health and neurodevelopment. She is completing her PhD through the University of Otago with a focus on using available technology to support parents in managing home therapy programmes. The central theme being the integration of behaviour change science into clinical practice. Her passion is using technology to share the experience and voice of expert clinicians with other therapists and building international clinical networks through wired On Development and The Wired Collective. She was the leading organizer of the first eHealth Summit for therapists in pediatrics.