Digital Technologies Transforming Healthcare Delivery in Uzbekistan: Insights and Challenges

Abstract

Introducing digital technologies in primary healthcare in Uzbekistan has brought new aspects of patient-physician encounter; this created potential for efficient interaction and disavowing relational aspects of care. While digital healthcare receives increasing attention internationally, there are still considerable gaps in knowledge about digital healthcare in the developing contexts and the way that it addresses both technological factors and relational continuous care. This research seeks to fill this gap by examining the effects of digital platforms on healthcare in Uzbekistan.

Qualitative interviews with healthcare providers and patients, quantitative questionnaire surveys, and case studies of organisations adopting digital systems were used. Quantitative data collection involved the use of survey administered to students while qualitative data involved use of questionnaire were coded thematically after having been analyzed quantitatively to generate quantitative responses.

According to the findings, appointment scheduling is enhanced by 30%, and diagnostic accuracy is enhanced by 65%, supporting the work identifying digital tools in healthcare processes. Nevertheless, some future limitations that can be seen as limitations in patients’ access to telemedicine and challenges in the communication between patients and doctors were revealed, namely the problem of patients’ low digital literacy and the risk of depersonalization of the interaction. The findings offer a mitigation framework with deep focus on the patient, provider, and technology as critical components of now and future e-health.

These revelations hold significant policy relevance for both policymakers and practitioners for the fact that to remove the barriers highlighted above would require a combination of increased and improved efforts at creating and implementing digital literacy campaigns and the need to ensure that user interfaces of the platforms are well designed to support the target end-users’ needs. Therefore, the future studies should pursue further investigation of how some of these spins will affect the future dynamics of the health system of a given culture or nation in the long run. The findings of this research will be useful for fine-tuning the delivery of digital healthcare in developing locations and can be instructive to reform healthcare delivery on an international level.