The adopted strategy will improve the quality standards of healthcare provision using telemedicine.

Telemedicine in Ukraine began to be actively introduced in 2018 in rural areas with the involvement of consultant doctors to provide medical care and rehabilitation.

However, the approach to the use of telemedicine and the evaluation of its effectiveness was radically changed by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, the full-scale russian invasion, when many citizens were forced to limit their access to healthcare services, especially people in difficult circumstances who were unable to see a doctor.

“Telemedicine is undergoing active development in Ukraine: about 4,000 mobile telemedicine devices and diagnostic systems have been delivered to primary healthcare facilities. Regional telemedicine centres have started working in the regions, teleconsultations in certain areas of emergency medical care have been organised, etc.”, said Minister of Health Viktor Liashko.

All this creates opportunities for the rapid development and implementation of modern telemedicine technologies based on the electronic healthcare system and integration into the global telemedicine community.

The development of telemedicine in Ukraine is actively supported by Western partners.

The Strategy for Telemedicine Development in Ukraine was developed in cooperation with and with the technical support of the LHSS/USAID project.

As a reminder, Ukraine is currently running a number of pilot projects to provide medical care under martial law using various telemedicine platforms, including Teladoc Solo platform (USA/UK), Rehabilitation Gaming System (Spain), Epiqar (USA), System Carebits (Poland), Healthbot “Home Doctor” (Spain), and artificial intelligence-based telemedicine data processing systems Brainscan (Poland) and AIDOC (USA).

Also this week, the Ukrainian Parliament approved in its first reading a draft law that would expand the possibilities for using telemedicine and launch a new stage in the development of telemedicine technologies in Ukraine.