Online Clinical Consultation as a Utility Tool for Managing Medical Crisis During a Pandemic: Retrospective Analysis on the Characteristics of Online Clinical Consultations During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a newly-identified infectious diseases that has rapidly spread throughout the world with rising fatalities with declaration by World Health Organization as the pandemic. Online consultations have been shown to alleviate the pandemic with our study aims to demonstrate whether online consultation can be a solution for acute health crisis. Retrospective analysis of the characteristics of online consultations through two primary care online-consultation platforms during COVID-19 pandemic was performed at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, which led the assessment of COVID-19-symptoms patients in Guangzhou. The 3473 online consultations were divided into pre-pandemic and pandemic period groups with Chi-square test as statistical analysis method. The number of online consultations has increased with diagnosis of upper respiratory tract infection, psychological conditions, COVID-19-related investigations and interventions. The increased online consultations met the increased demand of the relevant clinical services and reduced the overwhelming hospital presentations, thus decreasing the potential COVID-19 spread inside the major tertiary hospital and sparing the resources for acute crisis management. The epidemiology and disease characteristics of online consultations during the pandemic have been demonstrated with identification of the enabling factors and potential barriers in improving online healthcare in China with online consultation model being a durable solution for pandemic in future.