Information and communication technologies in emergency care services for patients with COVID-19: a multi-national study

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are known for supporting healthcare services in dealing with adverse situations. However, little is known on the contribution of ICTs in a prolonged crisis involving a new disease, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we carry out an exploratory investigation of which ICTs contribute the most to the emergency care of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 according to healthcare technology experts and how physicians perceive these contributions. Initially, we applied an online survey to 109 healthcare technology experts. Then, we conducted 16 in-depth follow-up interviews with emergency medicine professionals from 10 countries to identify the ICTs contributing the most to treat COVID-19 patients. Results from the survey indicated four ICTs as the most useful to support the treatment of COVID-19 patients; they are remote consultations, digital platforms for data sharing, digital non-invasive care, and interconnected medical decision support. The interviews provided insight into the applicability of those ICTs for the studied context. The four main ICTs were also found to be logically compatible with the complexity of the pandemic, reducing undesirable complexity attributes (e.g. physical proximity between caregivers and infected patients) and amplifying desirable ones  (e.g. interactions that support collaborative work and knowledge sharing).

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• emergency care
• complexity
• healthcare 4.0
• information and communication technologies

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [grant numbers 303509/2015-5, 310740/2020-7].

Notes on contributors

Leandro Miletto Tonetto

Leandro Miletto Tonetto is Professor of Design at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Brazil) and co-founder of Zooma Consumer Experience. His research focuses on design for wellbeing as a means to foster human development and health. He is board member of the Special Interest Group in Wellbeing, Happiness, and Health (SIGWell) of the Design Research Society. His research is funded by CNPq (Grant # 310740/2020-7).

Tarcísio Abreu Saurin

Tarcisio Abreu Saurin is Associate Professor at the IE Department of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). He has a BS in Civil Engineering, M.Sc. in Construction Management, and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering. He was visiting scholar at the University of Salford (UK) and Macquarie University at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation. His main research interests are related to the modelling and management of complex socio-technical systems, lean production, resilience engineering, and safety management. He has carried out research and consulting projects on these topics, mostly in healthcare, construction, and manufacturing industries.

Flavio Sanson Fogliatto

Flavio S. Fogliatto holds a Full Professor position in the IE Dept of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University (USA). He specialises in the research areas of Quality Engineering, Operations Management, and Healthcare Analytics. His research is funded by CNPq (Grant # 303509/2015-5).

Guilherme Luz Tortorella

Guilherme Luz Tortorella is Senior Lecturer of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Lean Systems and Associate Editor of the journals Production and Operations Management Research. He is one of the founders of the Brazilian Conference on Lean Systems and has more than 19 years of practical and academic experience with manufacturing and operations management.

Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy

Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy is a Lecturer in the Department of Operations Management at the University of Liverpool Management School (ULMS), UK. Prior to joining ULMS, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. He completed his doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, India. He researches in the area of healthcare operational excellence, transformative service research, satellite imagery analytics, digitisation, and business model innovation.

Valentina Marques da Rosa

Valentina Marques da Rosa is Ph.D. Candidate in Industrial Engineering at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She studies the relationships between users and artifacts, focusing on subjects related to wellbeing and health.

Jeslyn Tengkawan

Jeslyn Tengkawan is a physician and a public health professional from Indonesia. Her passions in medicine, child health, and research have brought her to serve the Indonesian community with the goal to reduce health disparities through Capella Project Foundation. She earned her medical doctor degree in 2017 and worked as an emergency doctor and a researcher in West Nusa Tenggara for two years.