The use of E-health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study in China’s Hubei province

ABSTRACT

Globally, the use of e-health has accelerated dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected in China’s Hubei province (i.e. the first epicentre of COVID-19), this research explores how the pandemic influences the practices of e-health from the perspective of users. Through analysis of 1,033 surveys and 14 in-depth interviews, we find that e-health has played a crucial role in residents’ healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain external factors influence the choice of digital health, including the high risk of infection outdoors, the shutting down of transport systems, and dysfunctional healthcare facilities that neglect non-COVID-19 patients’ clinical demands. Against this backdrop, we argue digital health acts as a functional equivalent to traditional medical treatment and has largely satisfied patients and users in the crisis period. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has unintentionally sped up the diffusion of digital medicine over the long term as respondents expressed their willingness to continue use of e-health in the post-COVID-19 phase. However, we assert that despite the increasing use of e-health, it cannot fully substitute traditional offline treatment. Thus, we suggest a combination of online and offline healthcare will be more commonly practiced in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Digitalisation
• medicine
• e-health
• online
• COVID-19
• China

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for seven students at East China University of Political Science and Law, who assisted us with data collection. They are Jin Cheng, Bingying Deng, Xingxing He, Yijun Liu, Yun Xia, Pei Xu, and Bingwei Zhang.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).