Greta Hughson
12 July 2021

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland began providing telemedicine services for medical abortion. In this interview, we spoke to Dr John Reynolds-Wright of the Medical Research Council Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh, who worked with a team to assess outcomes and acceptability for people using these services in Edinburgh. The study worked with 663 women choosing medical abortion at home between April and July 2020.

The study started in April 2020 – how did it come about so soon after COVID restrictions began?
I usually work as a doctor in sexual and reproductive health but I’m currently doing a PhD and working as a research fellow at the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre in Edinburgh. Before COVID, we were working on a large randomised controlled trial (RCT) called the UTAH study, which stood for ‘Using Telemedicine to improve early medical Abortion at Home’. We were randomising women to have a telephone assessment prior to their abortion versus a standard face-to-face assessment.

Continued: https://www.aidsmap.com/news/jul-2021/telemedicine-abortion-care-safe-effective-preferred