Telehealth - an emerging health technology as a future model in Vietnam during Covid-19 pandemic: practical experience from Phutho General Hospital.

UNSTRUCTURED: Telehealth has emerged as a model of modern technology for healthcare services in Vietnam during the Covid-19 pandemic. Actively preventing the outbreak of Covid-19 using the national digital transformation program, Vietnamese Ministry of Health has launched the project 2628/QD-BYT that approved a scheme for remote medical examination and treatment for 2020-2025. The project is aims to connect 1000 hospitals to strengthen the quality of medical services using expertise of central hospitals to support rural areas via provincial hospitals. The Phutho General Hospital (PGH) is one of leading provincial hospitals that participated in and applied the early telehealth systems in Vietnam. Using telehealth systems, PGH can offer a valuable support to the doctor's activity by streamlining and facilitating their work. Telehealth was demonstrated to be feasible, acceptable, and effective in PGH, Vietnam, and it allowed for significant improvements in health care outcomes. The Covid-19 pandemic has facilitated the acceleration and enhancement of Telehealth in Vietnam. The success of telehealth in Phutho may be a useful reference for other parts of the world. However, this telehealth system covers focused on the connectivity between doctors rather than the one between doctors and patients which is another area needing further assessment.