Abstract:
Today, the development of telemedicine and remote medical consultations (RMC) is considered as one of the key areas of healthcare digitalization in our country. However, the success of digitalization should be measured by the volume of demand, and therefore it becomes an important task to study the need and readiness of different social groups to turn to such ways of interacting with a doctor. The presented article is devoted to the identification and description of the main socio-demographic factors that determine the involvement of different groups of the population in the use of RMC. The data were obtained in the course of a sociological study carried out in a combined strategy. At the first stage, in-depth interviews (n = 90) were conducted with residents of large Russian cities using digital technologies to take care of their health and receive medical care. At the second stage, a public opinion survey was conducted among residents of St. Petersburg on the use of such technologies in order to maintain and maintain health, including the appeal to the RMC (n = 861). As a result, it was found that residents of St. Petersburg rarely resort to RMC (74% have never consulted a doctor remotely). This is due, firstly, to the avoidance of going to the doctor and attempts at self-treatment, and secondly, to the distrust of new digital technologies and the general distrust of the healthcare system. At the same time, those groups that are most in need of new ways of communicating with a doctor (the elderly and low-income people) are the least included in the use of RMC.