Digital health during COVID-19: Assoc Prof Josip Car

Alleviating specific challenges posed by COVID-19, Assoc Prof Josip Car provides health practitioners detailed guidance on implementing and structuring telemedicine consultations for remote patient assessments. During periods of community spread, remote consultations reduce the risk of exposure to infectious agents for vulnerable populations, and help prevent overloading of primary care and hospital systems.

Assoc Prof Car is Director of the Centre for Population Health Sciences and of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Digital Health and Health Education in NTU’s  Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. He also chairs the School’s Health Services and Outcomes Research programme.

“The challenge of telemedicine is both technical and relational. A successful virtual visit requires technical solutions and procedures to manage the virtual clinic, and more importantly, doctors and patients need to build rapport and mutual trust in such settings,” he says.

Together with colleagues from the University of Oxford in the UK and the National University of Singapore, Assoc Prof Car authored an article that has become the national guideline for treatment of COVID-19 in the UK and in countries that follow the guidance and advice provided by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

He has also written guides on video consultations for healthcare practitioners in primary and specialist care, and responded to media requests by providing expert opinion and a commentary on COVID-19 from a public health perspective.

“Communicating health matters to the public is a public health measure to provide evidence-based information that is trustworthy. Clear and reliable public communication is particularly critical in times of outbreak to help the nation unite and collectively achieve a societal good,” Assoc Prof Car notes.