ID-5184 Wonca Abstracts supplement A-K 13-10-23 - Flipbook - Page 213
WONCA 2023 Supplement 1: WONCA 2023 abstracts (A–K)
A
B
C
Direct-to-consumer telemedicine: A scoping review,
bibliometric analysis and implications for future research
and practice
D
Dr Darran Foo1, Louise Ellis2, Prof Simon Willcock1, Jeffrey Braithwaite2
E
2
MQ Health General Practice, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University,
Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences
1
F
G
H
I
J
K
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has heralded in a new era of telehealth for the provision of
primary healthcare. It has acted as a catalyst for policymakers and providers to embrace telehealth as
an accepted form of primary care service delivery on a broad scale. In parallel, the private sector has
seen a rapid growth of telehealth companies with the global telehealth market estimated to be worth
US$600 billion in 2028.
Contributing to this meteoric growth has been the rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine
services. These services can be defined as services utilising various telecommunication technologies
to offer virtual clinical services rendered by a medical practitioner which are marketed directly
to, initiated and paid for by the patient. Alongside increasing investment into DTC telemedicine
companies, patients are also utilising such services at a swift pace, but there is still a lack of research
about whether these services provide comparable care to traditional primary care models.
We conducted a search of four academic databases (Medline, EMBASE, Scopus and CINAHL)
for articles published from January 2013 to May 2023, using key words for direct-to-consumer
telemedicine. Relevant article information was extracted, including journal, type of article, key words,
focus and corresponding author. Information was coded, synthesised and summarised using
descriptive statistics and narrative techniques.
In all, 127 studies were identified for inclusion in the review, reflecting the paucity of literature in
this domain over the past 10 years. A range of studies was identified, with most studies being
focused on major DTC telemedicine platforms across the US, their user characteristics and specific
clinical conditions.
In this presentation, we will discuss the results of our review which assessed the key characteristics
and evidence gaps in the literature surrounding DTC telemedicine and discuss future directions and
implications for research and practice in this area.
211