Every week, a different guest tweeter takes charge of Croakey’s rotated, curated Twitter account, @WePublicHealth, and uses the account to cover specific health issues or events.
Last week Danny Vadasz, CEO of the Health Issues Centre, raised questions about the Road to Recovery from COVID19, including tweets from HIC’s online forum COVID-19: Will the Road to Recovery Cost Our Privacy? Here’s a summary.
The COVIDSafe App
Privacy expert @DavidVaile says this temporary crisis is currently well controlled without a COVIDSafe app. We risk validating a very intrusive model without asking how it works, if it works, or its side-effects.
I am convinced that there will not only be a second but a third wave. I also don’t link the app to whether or not the wave will happen, I think it’s a given and the app will never completely stop it.
Singapore shows what happens when you use the app and take your eye off the ball with other measures. Went from being the poster child for how to do it to being an absolute disaster.
Singapore had an initial spike when people first starting using the app, then infection rates stabilised and declined. The initial spike seems an inevitable outcome of releasing people from lockdown. Perhaps flatter with better tracing?
For some people with a disability, they don’t have mobile phones or can’t upload it with the version they have.
Telehealth
The Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria has increased telehealth appointments from 231 in April 2019 to 11,200 in April 2020, protecting patients and staff and reducing wait times. Proof telehealth can work?
We need to understand that [telehealth] is a tool to improve access (not a replacement for all face to face medicine in the future).
Doctors have not been allowed to deliver healthcare in any other way before now. This is the first time.
Bigger opportunity to do things like family conferences, which often can’t happen because you can’t get people together. Could do it on the phone in future.
[Telehealth] is likely to be more restricted post-COVID but consumers should be standing up for it because there are so many with disability or mobility issues etc who can benefit from it.
Hopefully this will be the spur to see us move on to technology that will support us in the future. But there are things we need to do face to face – e.g. lance a boil, diagnose cancer.
But the problem is we were dropped in it suddenly so we are still playing catch-ups with the technology.
How do you ensure marginalised aren’t further marginalised? Providers need to also provide face to face care to ensure full quality care is available.
Telehealth is being touted as a golden solution for protecting at-risk people during the pandemic. But is it? Or is it exacerbating isolation for the most isolated?
I’m already lonely. Now I can’t even see my home health professionals? What if they’re my only contact with the outside world?
Biggest issue is actually for those who struggle with literacy or access to Technology.
Implications of Telehealth for non-English speaking people. There is a really good interpreter service GPs can access that can be applied to telehealth very well.
Consumer involvement
Society should have the opportunity to input into policy deliberation, not just report on the impact of that policy after it has been enacted.
It’s not enough to think of community participation as the complaints you get when policy goes wrong. Community should be able to participate before policy is handed down.
The only way to understand the unintended consequences of good intentions, the experiences of those who fall between policy gaps or have special circumstances…is to ask them.
The people of Australia have placed great trust in their leaders to steer us through this crisis. But as we enter recovery, it’s important to return to a partnership approach.
