In Brazil, federal universities and their students actively participated in the creation of strategies to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
The SoU Ciencia organization conducted a survey of Federal Universities in Brazil, in which 59% of the institutions claimed to have carried out actions in favor of telehealth. For example, the establishment of new telemedicine centers, Digital Health systems in association with laboratories, municipalities, state governments or the Unified Health System (SUS).
The survey also showed the importance of student participation in the development of tools and applications for patient monitoring, data visualization, georeferencing, and real-time database development.
However, the survey report highlighted care modalities developed by universities, for example, teleguidance. This format was applied to work on disease prevention during the pandemic, which involved various tools such as phone calls, emails, and web platforms.
The Federal University of Acre (UFAC) launched the "Dial Coronavirus" initiative in partnership with the Acre Telehealth Center and the Health Secretariats at the state and municipal levels. This strategy managed to monitor confirmed COVID-19 cases through WhatsApp on a daily basis.
On the other hand, he also highlighted the telemonitoring carried out by students from the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), which allowed the remote monitoring of health professionals from the UFMA Hospital infected with COVID-19.
Likewise, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) launched a platform called Telecovid-19 that served for automated digital monitoring, using teletriage techniques. Thanks to this initiative, it was possible for patients at the UFMG clinics to pass through a filter in which they were classified by priority according to their situation: emergency, urgent, moderate or mild case.
For its part, the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), through multidisciplinary teams of nursing, nutrition, physiotherapy, doctors, among others, conducted teleconsultations with suspected patients or with confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19.
Other notable cases were those of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), which provided teleconsultations to public servants and university employees; or the telerehabilitation program implemented by the Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar).
In this sense, Brazil was one of the countries in Latin America with the greatest progress in terms of Digital Health and telehealth in its university systems.
