A rapid review of the DOH telemedicine regulatory sandbox as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic

• Main Authors: Cielo, Bernardo C., II, Wee-Co, P., Evangelista, A.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2020
• Subjects: Telecommunication in medicine—Philippines; Telemedicine
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/9500
• Institution: De La Salle University

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent public health response has contributed to an increased interest in adopting telemedicine solutions as a way to decongest health facilities and to enable access to primary care consultations for both COVID and non-COVID cases. As a way to explore the potential of telemedicine, the Department of Health (DOH) engaged in a telemedicine regulatory sandbox. The regulatory sandbox employed a participatory approach to policy development where DOH partnered with private providers in a joint exercise to provide telemedicine services to the public while gathering data and inputs essential for policy making. The researchers used data from the submitted summary reports of the telemedicine providers and from the Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) conducted with key stakeholders to decompose the processes employed and to catalogue and analyse the experience of participating in the sandbox. Through the data, the researchers were able to identify important points to consider in future enhancements and in defining subsequent policies and regulations. The primary successes observed were in how the sandbox helped legitimize telemedicine practice and how it created a space for DOH to exercise its regulatory functions. Likewise, it created the right incentives to encourage telemedicine providers to actively engage DOH. That provided, the data and reports submitted by providers do not meet DOH standards and requires stricter enforcement to ensure compliance. Additionally, adopting a network approach to governance and increasing local investments to facilitate integration are seen to be essential in helping the telemedicine market grow and to help improve access to telemedicine services.