If you’re in a real hurry, here’s the one-line description of my research: I want to explore the role of telemedicine in primary care access for older Chinese migrants in the UK.

Now that might sound a bit confusing because of some of the words in that sentence, so here comes the explanations.

What is telemedicine? 

By definition, telemedicine is the kind of healthcare provided when the healthcare professional and the patient are not physically together. It’s also called remote healthcare. One of the most common forms, as many people may have experienced during COVID lockdowns, is having a consultation with a doctor over the telephone. There are other forms of course, like using a video call or a chat; sometimes this involves filling in a “consultation form” online and wait for the practice to reply – you may not need to speak to a doctor at all.

Telemedicine is not limited to consultation only. In fact, making an appointment is a part of healthcare service that’s often done remotely now – either go to the GP practice’s website or call them on the phone. Similarly, what happens after the consultation could also be remote. An example would be renewing prescriptions using the practice’s designated app.

What is primary care? 

Primary care is the care you receive when you first see a professional for a health issue. This means when you see a GP, a dentist, an optometrist (the person who does eye tests), or a pharmacist for health advice. In contrast, when you’re referred to a specialist for further treatment and care, it is considered secondary care.

Since the services provided by different primary care professionals are so different, most part of my research will be focusing on GP care.

What is healthcare access?

In academia there are many fancy ways to define and model healthcare access – they are not helpful for explaning the word so I won’t mention them here (even I get confused sometimes, I know). For a patient, however, I think it’s as simple as “I’m getting the help I need”. In real life this involves many small steps such as knowing when to see a doctor, where to find a doctor, getting to the doctor’s office (this step is a bit different when we’re online), understanding each other, and in the end getting the right care and things get better.

So what my research looks at is the role of telemedicine in this whole process  – what’s gotten better, what’s gotten worse, and what are the new and unexpected steps.

What do I mean by “older Chinese migrants”? 

Defining the age scope of “older” has bugged me a lot. With the differences in policies, life expectancies, and cultures, every country has a different cut off line for who is considered senior – it may even differ for each person! In western countries this is usually 65 years and older, because of retirement age and social benefits. For my research,  I have decided to settle with “60 and older”, in line with the World Health Organisation’s definition and Chinese cultural concepts.

In the UK there are people who consider themselves “Chinese” from different parts of the world – not only China. They all share the same languages and culture. With that in mind, I aim to explore the experience of this ethnic group without limiting on citizenship or hometown – in formal words, I’m aiming at “self-identified ethnically Chinese”, people who consider themselves to come from the Chinese cultural group.

Compared to “older” and “Chinese”, “migrant” is much simpler to define. For my research, migrant means anyone not born in the UK, desipte when they arrived in the UK, what they came to the UK for, and whether they have obtained citizenship.

With these explanations and definitions, I hope that one-line decription now makes a lot more sense. You may wonder why I have chosen this topic – I will talk about this in another blog. Cheers!