Lucas Seuren

My work focuses on understanding how doctors and patients communicate during consultations, and how digital technologies, that is, telemedicine, affects the quality of care. Using a Learning Health Systems approach, my research involves close collaborations with patients, health care professionals, and other stakeholders.

Currently, my research investigates how telemedicine can help older people receive high quality care in the community. As our population is ageing, people more frequently have multiple medical conditions and primary care providers are not always able to provide adequate care. As a result, patients frequently end up in the hospital, which can impact their physical and mental wellbeing. The goal is to support primary care so that people can receive care in their own environment.

One area that I am particularly interested is how technology affects the conversations between patients and care providers. While people have become more familiar with video technologies like Zoom and Teams during COVID, video and other forms of telemedicine are not adequate replacements of face-to-face consultations. At the same time, telemedicine offers many benefits, such as convenience for patients. My aim is to analyse when telemedicine is an appropriate way of providing health care, what its limitations are, and how we can improve communication between health care professionals and patients.