6. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
Digitalization of healthcare services in Turkiye is in line with the
global digitalization trend. For digitalization transformation,
significant investments are necessary both in private and public organizations. The benefits of digitalization are valued by healthcare
professionals. Digitalization of healthcare offer many advantages to
healthcare professionals, patients and healthcare delivery. The major
threat to digitalization of healthcare iscyber-attacks resulting in
loss of patient medical records or use of patient data for different
purposes. Among all the digitalization of healthcare services, the
closed-loop medicine delivery system is the most important
digitalization step to track medicines from their arrival in pharmacy
and their delivery to patients without any human error.
Telemedicine is mostly used in private hospitals and the use of
telemedicine has been increased since Covid-19 pandemic and its use is more likely to continue to increase for patients who have transportation
issues, health problems or do not want to go to hospitals because of a
chance of contracting infection. With the new legislation the use of
telemedicine is expected to expand into other fields.
The use of artificial intelligence is limited to a few areas. AI is currently used in the field of radiology because it can make the
diagnosis quicker. However, the use of AI in other areas is expected to
increase.
Similar to our findings other studies indicate that digital hospital
applications increase the quality of information exchange both within
healthcare professionals and between the hospital and
patients.24,25 It will make possible to perform
statistical data analysis of the data collected in the common access
areas of all healthcare institutions.26 Quick access
to the data registered in the system without time and place restrictions
allow healthcare professionals and all other employees to make quick
decisions in emergency situations.27 As parallel to
our findings, the article written by Peker, et al show that digital
healthcare services provide several benefits to healthcare
professionals, managers and patients, but they carry several important
disadvantages that should not be ignored and improved. For example,
situations such as application problems related to software and hardware
systems of Health Information Systems, lack of education and orientation
of users, lack of information about information security, negative
attitudes towards applications, adaptation to technology could cause
problems in all areas where health professionals can
benefit.28
According to our findings, the use of telemedicine services in public
settings in Turkiye is very rare due to the patient load of physicians
on a daily basis and patient preference. Only private hospitals in
Turkiye are widely offering telemedicine services in many fields but
not yet in ophthalmology or wound care or cardiology. However,
telemedicine is used in most medical specialties such as cardiology,
chronic wound care, dermatology, ophthalmology, and trauma care
effectively in developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia,
UK, Germany, and the Netherlands.30,31,32 While almost
all health insurance companies, including state-sponsored health
insurance companies (Medicare, Medicaid), encourage the use of
telemedicine33 in the USA. Our findings reveal that
the Turkish Ministry of Health very recently announced the legislation
about the use of telemedicine on February 10,2022. In the past years the
private health insurance companies have been working on how to revise
the policies. For example, Ege University Medical Faculty Hospital
provides healthcare services for patients with chronic diseases due to
the COVID-19 epidemic. To be able to continue without serious
disruptions, the “Telemedicine Polyclinic System” application has been
used to provide the treatment of patients who applied to hospital
polyclinics.34
In summary, the widely use of telemedicine services in public hospitals
might take some time in Turkiye due to patient preference for
face-to-face interactions with healthcare professionals and
infrastructure of telemedicine applications.