ABSTRACT
Telehealth has emerged as a model of modern technology for health care services in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic. To actively prevent the outbreak of COVID-19 by using a national digital transformation program, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health launched project 2628/Quyet dinh-Bo y te, which approved a scheme for remote medical examinations and treatments for 2020 to 2025. The project aims to connect 1000 hospitals to strengthen the quality of medical services by using the expertise of central hospitals to support rural areas via provincial hospitals. Phutho General Hospital (PGH) is one of leading provincial hospitals that participated in and applied the early telehealth systems in Vietnam. By using telehealth systems, PGH can offer valuable support to doctors' activities by streamlining and facilitating their work. Telehealth was demonstrated to be feasible, acceptable, and effective at PGH in Vietnam, and it resulted in considerable improvements in health care outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated the acceleration and enhancement of telehealth in Vietnam. The success of telehealth in Phutho may be a useful reference for other parts of the world. However, this telehealth system focuses on the connectivity among doctors rather than the connectivity between doctors and patients, which is an area that needs further assessment.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is a novel infectious disease pandemic with the agent SARS-CoV-2 virus which is currently affecting and causing damage globally. The outbreak has been crossing over 200 countries in the world. In the situation of the outbreak of COVID-19, Vietnam has first sixteen typical cases confirmed positive updated to Feb 28th, 2020. After completely applying the medical prevention and active control, Vietnam has the ability to take control of the outbreak of COVID-19 as a recent of WHO assessment. Vietnam has been reported as an effective country for prevention and control the outbreak of COVID-19. We retroactive reviewed our experience with 16 positive cases isolation. This article aims to present the first cohort of COVID-19 patients updated to Feb 28th, 2020 in Vietnam and sharing the national response to the pandemic.