Seeking Medical advice since COVID-19 (part one)

• March 30, 2020
• Shaun Richards
• no comments

Using the CitizenMe platform, we went out to our COVID-19 community, which is an open-data research project designed to enable the world’s citizens to share real-time opinions and data about COVID-19 with the institutions fighting the pandemic.

Results: Preferred methods of speaking with a professional

We sent out 2 key questions:

• Before the COVID-19 virus outbreak, which was your preferred method of speaking with a medical professional?
• Since the COVID-19 virus outbreak, what is/would be your preferred method of speaking with a medical professional?

Overall:

• Those who use mobile services and telephones are more likely than average to be male and younger;
• Those who said they visited In-person before COVID-19  are more likely than average to be female;
• Those in technology-centric industries are more likely to use technology as the method to speak with medical professionals.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been a huge shift in the ways that people are going to speak with a medical professional:

Key differences between preferred methods of speaking with a medical professional before and since the COVID-19 outbreak

What methods are citizens moving into from before to since the COVID outbreak?
Only 17% of people who said they would see a medical professional in person before the outbreak would see one since.  52% have shifted into telephone services, and 1 in 10 will use a mobile app

Gender: Before the outbreak, females were more likely to want to go in-person to see a medical professional, with males also high at 68%. Both were also as likely to speak on the telephone. Since the outbreak, both genders have diffused into methods other than ‘in-person’, with there being significant differences in speaking with a medical professional on the telephone:

Age: Before the outbreak, the older you are, the more likely you will want to see a medical professional in-person. Since the outbreak, there has been more diffusion in age in the type of methods of speaking with a medical professional:

“The CitizenMe COVID-19 community is an open-data research project designed to enable the worlds citizens to share real-time opinions and data about COVID-19 with the institutions fighting the pandemic.” All data gathered is shared anonymously with health services and researchers, governments, journalists, charities – and with the general public.  If you would like a full, anonymised copy of the data, please email us at COVID@citizenme.com