1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the use of digital healthcare and access to traditional healthcare services around the world [1,2]. The pandemic resulted in a shift towards the use of telemedicine and other digital healthcare services, as people sought to reduce the risk of infection by avoiding in-person visits to hospitals and clinics or health services were deliberately restricted to remote delivery [3,4]. Simultaneously, the pandemic has widely disrupted traditional healthcare systems, leading to shortages of personal protective equipment and other supplies, as well as challenges in delivering care to patients [1]. Countries have also shown a variety of responses to the pandemic [5]. Those with a more digitally mature infrastructure and health systems were able to more easily adapt to the challenges posed by COVID-19 [2,6]. Nevertheless, concerns regarding the fitness of digital health-oriented policies and their ongoing roles in the health ecosystem remain [2,6,7].

Appropriate implementation of these new policies will require an improved understanding of whether members of the general population are interested in seeking access to digital healthcare [8]. Overall, online search volumes for healthcare-related topics have increased significantly over the course of the pandemic [9,10]. While search engines cannot substitute health professionals as a sole health information source due to a combination of the prominence of misinformation and a lack of health, digital, and science literacy, [11,12] search engine data can be instrumental in understanding the general preference of populations in exploring the possibility of using digital health [13,14]. It is unclear whether search behavior is always translated into actual demand for healthcare services, but evidence suggests that online searches could be an initial pathway of seeking access to health services [13–15].

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created a natural experiment that permitted us to determine whether and how health-seeking behavior changed in response to disruptions in traditional services [16,17]. Previous research using interrupted time-series indicated that digital health search behavior spiked during the early stages of the pandemic, though it declined shortly afterwards [15]. However, this research was only able to identify the structural breaks within a time-series and did not allow for control groups in the study design. In this study, we hypothesized that individuals became more interested in digital healthcare during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the same period in 2019. To test this hypothesis, we quantified Google search volumes related to healthcare and compared findings from before to those collected during the first few months after the announcement of the pandemic as a proxy for digital healthcare-seeking behavior [13,15,18]. Evaluation of data collected from Google Trends can be used to understand, monitor, and potentially forecast public interest and information-seeking trends and has become an increasingly popular method for assessing population preferences in various fields associated with health research [14,19,20].

2. Methods

This article has a quasi-experimental study design and uses a difference-in-difference (DiD) analysis to estimate the change in public search behavior in digital health between 2019 and 2020 [21]. The design used for this analysis differed somewhat from conventional DiD regression techniques. Specifically, we followed methodological adaptations [22,23], which have been also used in previous research of Google Trends [24] and are discussed step-wise below.

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive results

As shown in Fig 1, our findings weighted by population size revealed an overall increase in search volumes related to digital healthcare using each of the aforementioned five keywords after the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 11 2020, compared to the same dates in 2019. Notably, telehealth and telemedicine seem to only be sought for after the pandemic announcement. The slight increases before the cut-off of 11 March 2020 can be attributed to the heterogenous spread of COVID-19 in the studied countries. Search volumes performed in each of the six countries under study are included in Figures A-F in S1 Appendix (pp. 3–5).

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Fig 1. Google Trends scaled search volumes both before and after the WHO announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, weighted by population size.

The vertical axis documents the average search volume (scaled from 0 to 100) before and after March 11 (designated as Day 0) in both 2019 and 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000241.g001

3.2. Difference-in-difference estimates

The official WHO announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a significant increase in the overall intensity and volume of searches using digital health-related keywords (Table 1). Our findings revealed a 10.49-point increase (95% confidence interval [CI] 5.68–15.31) in the volume of searches performed using the keyword telehealth, an 8.54-point increase (95% CI 3.06–14.02) in the volume of searches featuring the keyword telemedicine, and a 7.03-point increase (95% CI 2.39–11.67) in the volume of searches that included the keyword health app. Our sensitivity analysis shows minor changes that can be attributable to the transformation of the variable-of-interest towards a moving average. In contrast to the main analysis, online doctor and online health were found to be significant in the sensitivity analysis. Additional details are included in Table B in S1 Appendix (p. 6).

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Table 1. The effects of the pandemic announcement on digital health search volumes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000241.t001

The increases in search volumes based on specific keywords differed to some degree in each of the six countries evaluated (see Table 2 and Figure G in S1 Appendix). For example, in Australia, search volumes that included the terms telehealth and health app increased by 9.05 points (95% CI 4.25–13.85) and 9.85 points (95% CI, 0.82–8.87), respectively. Similarly, Canada reported a 16.12-point increase (95% CI 3.21–29.01) in the volume of searches using the keyword online doctor; the United Kingdom reported a similar increase of 13.23 points (95% CI 6.45–20.01) in searches using the keyword health app. The volume of searches performed in New Zealand featuring the keyword telehealth increased by 9.89 points (95% CI 3.30–16.48); those featuring the term health app increased by 11.19 points (95% CI 4.83–17.55). In the United States and Ireland, use of the term telehealth increased by 24.54 points (95% CI 13.90–35.19) and 8.80 points (95% CI 4.76–12.85), respectively; similarly, the use of the term telemedicine increased by 27.59 points (95% CI 15.50–39.68) and 5.52 points (95% CI 1.06–9.98), respectively in these two countries.

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Table 2. The impact of the pandemic announcement on digital health search volumes in each country.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000241.t002

We tested our common trends assumptions by evaluating Google Trends data from 2016–2018. While a comparison of findings from 2016 and 2017 revealed no significant changes in search volumes featuring the keywords online health, telehealth, telemedicine, and health app, our findings revealed a significant decrease in search volumes featuring the keyword online doctor (-9.73 points; 95% CI -15.10 –-4.38). Similarly, no significant changes were reported in search volumes that included the keywords online doctor, telehealth, telemedicine, and health app in 2017 and 2018; by contrast, a significant reduction in searches featuring the keyword online health were reported during this period (-6.14 points; 95% CI -10.91 –-1.38). Additional details are included in Table A in S1 Appendix (p. 6).

4. Discussion

Our findings revealed an increase in the volume of searches that featured digital health-related keywords after 11 March 2020 compared to before and after controlling for the differences of the spread of disease. In particular, telehealth and telemedicine were only searched after the pandemic announcement, even though these terms have been in use since the early 2000’s [39,40], alluding to the possibility that these terms only came in common use during the pandemic. Some of the increases in search volume may be due to the disruption and unavailability of healthcare facilities and in-person services, increased health anxiety, or unwillingness to access in-person health services during the early months of the pandemic and the need to seek alternative sources of healthcare [2]; these findings may also reflect the nature of the healthcare system in each country. For example, the United States reported the largest increase in digital health search volumes, which aligns with previous research indicating a stark increase of digital healthcare utilization in the United States following the onset of the pandemic [41,42]. By contrast, Australia and New Zealand reported increases in search volumes using the keywords telehealth and health app; this may point toward the presence of a more established digital health ecosystem and the promotion of digital health services in these countries [43,44]. The United Kingdom also fits this profile; however, while we observed an increase in search volumes featuring the keyword health app, no significant changes were associated with the use of the keyword telehealth. The smaller increases observed in New Zealand can also be attributed to their effective pandemic response [45]. Even though these findings point towards some discrepancies in terminology across these six countries, our findings led us to conclude that the general public demonstrated an increased interest in digital healthcare during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The large increases in digital health search volumes specifically in the United States and the rise in the number of beneficiaries receiving digital healthcare early on in the pandemic may have been fueled by temporary policies and flexibilities that encouraged public and private payers to expand digital health coverage and reimbursement [46,47]. These findings suggest that the largest barrier to accessing digital health in the United States may be the policy landscape that prevents both prescription and reimbursement of this type of care. Unfortunately, the new policies were designed to be only temporary and may disappear once the pandemic officially ends. Although these policies remain in effect at the time of writing in December 2022, access to digital healthcare in the United States remains unstable. However, both Medicare and Medicaid services recently included certain forms of digital healthcare within their overall strategies; this important development may ultimately remove some of the structural barriers that prevent the full use of digital healthcare in the United States [47–50].

Interestingly, Australia and Canada took an approach that was similar to that used in the United States, and expanded medical benefits and services to accommodate digital health early during the pandemic [51,52]. However, the relative changes in digital health search volumes were far below those reported in the United States. In Australia, this was most likely because healthcare is generally affordable to all, and digital healthcare services had already been established and were in use prior to the pandemic [43]. Nevertheless, our results did reveal a significant increase in the search volumes that used the keyword telehealth, suggesting an overall increase in public interest in these services during the early months of the pandemic. In Canada, traditional healthcare services resumed as early as May 2020, which led to a decrease in digital health utilization from that point forward [52]. This may explain the overall smaller increases observed in search volumes reported in Canada. However, the increase in searches featuring the keyword online doctor remained significant even after this point in time, suggesting that some Canadians remained interested in accessing digital health services.

Our analysis of the common trends assumption revealed some fluctuations in digital search volumes from 2016 to 2018. However, the statistically significant fluctuations are exclusively those documenting decreases in search volumes; no significant increases were reported during this timeframe. These findings are in stark contrast to the results of our analysis of the pandemic period, in which significant increases in searches focused on telehealth, telemedicine, and health app were observed, thus suggesting that our analysis was not impacted by seasonal changes or artificial correlation. Additionally, our sensitivity analysis mitigated the effects of daily variation and emphasized long-term trends, resulting in online doctor and online health becoming significant. This is consistent with an earlier study that used weekly Google Trends data using the same set of keywords [15].

One strength of this study is the low probability of bias resulting from an anticipation effect leading up to the WHO pandemic declaration. Based on previous analyses of airline traffic [53] and Google Mobility data [54], as well as health-related Google searches [55], substantial changes to these patterns were observed only after the official WHO declaration was announced. For example, airline traffic remained constant until the week of 9 March 2020 [53]. Likewise, daily Google Mobility data reported for the countries under study remained constant relative to a baseline period (i.e., 3 January through 6 February 2020) until time points after 11 March 2020 [54]. Furthermore, previous research on public interest in digital health during the pandemic found no structural breaks in the time-series beyond the pandemic announcement between February 2019 and August 2020 [15]. In contrast, previous research using Google Trends data that used the implementation of lockdowns as cut-off point for their difference-in-differences designs reported the presence of an anticipation effect that started between one and three weeks prior to the start of the lockdown [24].

Some limitations of this study need to be considered. Unfortunately, we were not able to collect information on sociodemographic characteristics. Thus, we cannot rule out the possibility of selection bias. This is because young people, women, individuals with higher levels of education and/or income, and individuals representing the racial/ethnic majority in their societies are more likely to seek health information online, possibly due to these groups being more digitally connected and skilled [6,56–58]. These findings also imply that the needs and desires of a substantial cohort of individuals (i.e., those who may be unable to make full use of digital resources [57]) will not be represented in Google Trends data. Furthermore, we recognize that we collected data from only one search engine. While Google remains the most popular search engine, other sources of information may be used by those seeking digital healthcare. Additionally, Google search queries in languages other than English (e.g., in Canada and the United States, where French and Spanish, respectively, are the dominant languages of a large percentage of the population) were not captured in this study. Similarly, while we captured a large number of possible keywords, it remains possible that some linguistic nuances pertaining to digital healthcare were not captured by the reviews underpinning our data collection [34–36]. For some search terms, we observed mild search volume increases prior to the pandemic announcement, also observed in other studies using Google Trends data to examine the effects of COVID-19 [24]. While we have used a methodologically robust and widely applied approach, some results should be interpreted with caution. Our study also does not capture digital health-seeking behavior of individuals who contacted a general practitioner or health resource and instead received a direct referral to digital services.

Our findings highlight the changes of search behaviors when populations were faced with disruptions in traditional health services. However, the ongoing use of digital health and its structural implementation will require additional transformative work. Digital health services must be recognized as a valid form of healthcare. Comprehensive policy frameworks should be developed that will guide the sustained implementation and reimbursement of digital health services.

Supporting information