Is online healthcare services good or bad?

New normal and digitalisation have brought so much newness into our lives. And all of them have brought some benefits and some problems along with them. Online healthcare or Digital health services are one of those new things people got introduced with during the Covid period.

Online healthcare is an internet based service, available through websites or mobile apps. It was already launched before the Covid period, but during the period, it became famous and got a really huge consumer base. And they all are connected with this service now.

In an overview it seems like a magical invention of human evolution, and it made a few things so easy. But, each coin has its flip side too.

Pros:

• Get medicines at home: Through online medicine, one can order any medicine through a smartphone or a computer and get it delivered even within 24 hours. There is no need to go out and look for medicines in the shops.

• Book diagnostic tests from home: Blood tests and so many other diagnostic tests can be booked through digital health service. Patients don't need to worry about unnecessary rushes for diagnostic tests.

• Connect to the doctor in a minute: Through various apps or any other digital process, one can easily fix a virtual appointment with a doctor with just a few clicks. And the process works so fast. Whereas, on today's date, getting an appointment with a doctor is really hard.

• Get diagnosis reports faster through online: In this service, diagnostic reports also come faster. There are no currier issues, no address issues or any other reasons for unnecessary lateness. Reports get available online within the due date.

Cons:

There are a lot of benefits, but some serious problems also exist in the digital mode of healthcare which are very deep rooted.

• No direct communication with the doctor: In this case, the patients don't come to physical communication with the doctor. The entire treatment goes without a single physical touch of the doctor. Which is a big barrier in case of symptomatic analysis.

• Chances of wrong diagnosis in case of symptomatic treatment: Due to the barrier mentioned above, diagnosis may go toba wrong track. Especially, in the case of AI based systems, where symptomatic analysis gets generated by the AIs. And that can lead to big troubles sometimes.

• Digitalisation of human health: This transformation has digitised human health. So all the data about the health of the people are being collected and all these data are getting stored into a database. This database can be misused anytime and that can be a serious threat to the entire human society.