ABSTRACT
At present, telemedicine and remote visits represent one alternative to in-person visits to meet patients’ ambulatory care needs during the COVID-19 pandemic and its enforced social distancing requirements. Telemedicine is becoming popular in several clinical disciplines, including pain medicine and oncology. Two out of three chronic pain patients are women. Moreover, most women can be considered vulnerable patients, as they often need to take care of their families and jobs while under chronic pain or oncological treatment. By employing a case study, this chapter aims to delve deep into how this new paradigm can benefit patients’ quality of life. This chapter broadens the gender perspective on e-health, seeing this as an opportunity for patients, clinicians, and entrepreneurs in the field. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The world's fragmented response to the COVID-19 pandemic created fertile ground for mixed messages and inconsistency. The authors analyzed Google-trending insights from five countries (Italy, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) across three-week time (1-23 March 2020) to document trends in population health anxiety in response to the initial global spreading of the outbreak. The results are expressed in the form of Uncertainty Index (UI), which reflects the total number of Google searches/COVID-19 prevalence and standardized per million inhabitants. The United Kingdom experienced the highest level of health anxiety (UI = 11.5), followed by France (UI = 4.6) and Spain (UI = 3.2). The United States suffered the highest rate of uncertainty in the early stage of the pandemic;the Italian population experienced a balanced level of anxiety. Institutionalizing risk communication during COVID-19 should represent an integral part of the country emergency response.