During the pandemic there was considerable growth in health centers offering telemedicine services
In Colombia, telemedicine has progressed since 2006, when resolution 1448 was published, which opened the doors for the use of this modality in service-providing institutions and the enabling the extension of health services to remote locations. There were rethinks within the guidelines for the use of telehealth, in 2010 telehealth was established to support the Social Security system in Health, in 2015 Law 1751 of 2015 it was needed as one of the elements of the fundamental right to health the "access to health services and technologies that guarantees comprehensive care, timely and high quality respectively".
In addition, recently, in 2019, through resolution 2654 of 2019, in the second chapter, concerning Telesalud it was defined as a tool that “seeks to improve access, resoluteness, continuity, quality of clinical care, impact public health and health education, through the use of information and communications technologies”. And telemedicine in chapter three was defined as a component modality of telehealth that aims to facilitate access to health services in any of its phases, promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and palliation.
This year previous regulations on telehealth and telemedicine accompanied the health emergency situation to carry out a comprehensive strategy with traditional and remote medical services. The modality of telemedicine present in a considerable number of health centers was key for the population to continue receiving medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Although no country in the world was prepared for this pandemic, at least Colombia in terms of telehealth had a strong regulatory component, as well as significant advances by the different health actors,” explained the Director of Service Delivery of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Luis Fernando Correa.
Currently in Colombia there are 2.371 uncertain health facilities in the Special Register of Health Service Providers (REPS), in which they provide a total of 9.179 services in telemedicine mode.
This year the growth of telemedicine was accelerated, as there was a 117% increase in service providers offering this modality remotely, and the services offered during this year (January to September) increased by 192%. The most demanded services through telemedicine are internal medicine, psychology, nutrition and dietetics, dermatology and cardiovascular diagnosis.
The official also explained that “the provision of health services through the telemedicine modality must preserve quality with accessibility, opportunity, safety and relevance as set out in the mentioned Resolution”.
