Telemedicine advances in pharmacies: 5,000 cardiac emergencies discovered thanks to the ECG or Holter at home

Discovering a dangerous cardiac arrhythmia in the pharmacy near your home and then seeking treatment and seeing a specialist soon or in some cases, for the most serious ones, running to the emergency room for a life-saving intervention. This is what has already happened in several cases in the last year thanks to the advancement of telemedicine in pharmacies that are increasingly transformed into service pharmacies where screening and basic tests can be done for routine checks. In 2024 alone, almost one million telemedicine services were performed in over 11,000 Italian pharmacies, which led to the detection of over 116,000 anomalies on electrocardiograms, cardiac Holter monitors and blood pressure Holter monitors. Of these, approximately 5,000 were classified as serious, and required the patient to be sent to a specialist or the emergency room. The data were released by Federfarma in view of the States General of Prevention, promoted by the Ministry of Health and scheduled for June 16 and 17 in Naples.

It should be remembered that telemedicine tests performed in pharmacies - such as blood pressure and cardiac Holter, electrocardiogram and many others - are sent to the reporting centers where specialist doctors - such as cardiologists - work, who analyze and report the test data and in the event of anomalies, warn the pharmacist and the citizen who took the test to take action, with the possibility, among other things, of having a report ready to send to the 118 emergency service as has already happened in several cases, thus gaining time in case it is necessary to operate urgently. In addition to cardiac checks in pharmacies, approximately 5 million tests were also performed for screening for colorectal cancer and approximately 250 thousand screenings for chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Furthermore, pharmacies performed more than 55 thousand checks on adherence to therapy by patients suffering from hypertension, COPD and diabetes. Numbers that, according to Federfarma, show how pharmacies have assumed a growing role in local healthcare. The development of this type of service could then be supported by the full implementation of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), to whose activation pharmacies contributed, always within the scope of the experiment, by providing support to over 2 million citizens.+

“Prevention is increasingly being done in pharmacies,” says Marco Cossolo , national president of Federfarma. “Pharmacies have evolved to meet the needs of local healthcare, becoming health facilities that provide essential screening, monitoring and prevention services, in addition to dispensing drugs.” Cossolo points out that the new Convention, approved in March, has expanded and regulated these activities, establishing new collaborations, including the one recently signed with the union of outpatient specialists Sumai, for the reporting of telemedicine tests. “The time has come to make the Pharmacy of Services a structural part of the National Health Service,” adds Cossolo. To let citizens know which pharmacies provide the services, Federfarma has activated an interactive map on its website. The portal is updated in real time and allows citizens to quickly identify the services available in their area.