Jiangsu expands online health services in COVID-19 response

2022-12-20 12:12:00

Hospitals across Jiangsu Province have expanded the online services to cope with a surge in patients due to COVID-19 infections.

Doctors at the Sixth People's Hospital of Nantong offer online treatment service through the Internet hospital platform. Photo/Xu Congjun

Jiangsu has built 147 Internet hospitals with 32,494 medical professionals to meet the online needs for medical services. With the adjustment of the epidemic prevention and control measures, Internet hospitals in Nanjing have recently received a growing number of consultations.

Qu Feng, vice president of Nanjing Gulou Hospital’s Telehealth Services, said there are about more than 500 consultations per day, especially a rise of inquiries about COVID-19. The hospital has organized more than 1,000 doctors from 50 departments to provide integrated diagnosis and treatment for patients at different stages.

Qu also said the COVID-19 clinic has invited experts in respiratory, infection, pharmacy and other disciplines to introduce the health knowledge and guide asymptomatic and mild cases to seek help first online in order to avoid an overwhelming strain on medical resources. The Tele-health Services can also provide online diagnostic services for some common and chronic diseases in patients' follow-up visits to their doctors, and deliver the medicines to homes.

The Suzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine also opened an online clinic for disease prevention on December 15. The city has built 19 Internet hospitals to provide a broad range of services.

Command center of the service hot-line 12345 in Huai'an.

Huai'an City has organized medical experts to help answer questions received through the service hot-line 12345, which handled more than 1,500 inquires associated with COVID-19 every day. Efforts have been made to identify and address the pressing concerns and then provide information on response policy, vaccination, medicine and other specific topics. The knowledge base, updated constantly, helps hot-line operators to provide necessary information requested by the callers.