Tele-health Services in the Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era: The Zimbabwean Context

Abstract

Tele-health has the potential to make health services more effective, organised and accessible. This paper aims to explore the benefits of  adopting tele-healthcare in the post-COVID-I9 era. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic gave an opportunity to innovation such as  embracing telehealth services whereby health-care providers could virtually reach their clientele using telecommunication technology. A  qualitative study was conducted using the exploratory design. Semi-structured interviews were administered to ten youths who were  purposively selected and willing to participate in the study. Data was coded, categorised and thematically analysed. The findings revealed  that tele-healthcare was understood as the virtually delivery of healthcare services using telecommunication technology. The  modes commonly used are messaging applications, video conferencing and phone calls. The results also show that telehealthcare is cost  effective, it allows for easy exchange of medical information between patients and service providers and increases access to healthcare.  The benefits of telehealth services include providing practitioners the opportunity to attend to more patients than they would in physical  consultation, increased access of healthcare services by remote patients and it also allows for more efficient ways of providing healthcare  services. However, it can be a challenge in cases where internet connectivity is inefficient. It is recommended that telecommunication service providers ought to invest in internet infrastructure and broad bandwidth to reach patients in remote areas. Further  recommendations for health service providers include educating communities on the benefits of tele-healthcare through public health  campaigns, community out reaches and school-based education programmes.