Global Interest in Telehealth During COVID-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of Google Trends™

26, August 2020 | Bangladesh

Authors:

Abstract

Since the outbreak, healthcare systems across the globe are overcrowded with coronavirus disease (COVID- 19) patients. To sustain the response towards the pandemic, many hospitals have adapted to virtual healthcare and telemedicine. GoogleTM has become the most widely used search engine over the years. Google TrendsTM can be used to depict the public interest over a certain topic. The output of the Google TrendsTM is displayed as relative search volume (RSV) which is the proportionate search volume regarding a specific topic comparative to the total search volume in a specific time and region. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the daily reported number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths and the corresponding changes in Google TrendsTM RSV of telehealth over six months.