Abstract
Incorporation of telemedicine in general clinical practice is becoming a compelling need nowadays in the context of COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent burdens on the healthcare systems. Though telemedicine appears to be appealing and carries a lot of advantages, yet it is still faced by many challenges and barriers especially in developing countries. Our aim was to explore the impression of healthcare providers about telemedicine and its applicability in clinical practice in Egypt. A cross-sectional study was conducted among healthcare providers from different Egyptian governorates through a web-based survey. The survey gathered information about demographic, socioeconomic features of the enrolled healthcare participants; their knowledge, previous experience, impression about telemedicine, advantages of telemedicine over traditional medical services, barriers that may face telemedicine, and additional services that can be provided by telemedicine were also explored. Our study enrolled 642 healthcare providers from all over Egypt, 43.77% were females, of which 55.5% were physicians, 27.3% were nurses, 6.1% were technicians, 7.6% were administrative clerks, and 3.6% were medical directors. Sixty-four percent of participants reported that they have never used telemedicine. Smartphones were the most commonly used mean in the group who used telemedicine (65%), and smartphone applications were the favorable telemedicine service for about 50% of participants. Participants assumed that the use of telemedicine might not have a negative effect on the doctor-patient relationship but raised some concerns regarding the privacy and security of patients' data. Despite the fact that telemedicine appears to be appealing and widely accepted by healthcare providers, yet still, its implementation is confronted by some obstacles. Precise organizational guidelines need to be developed to clearly figure out the exact role of each healthcare provider to minimize their doubtfulness about telemedicine and to facilitate its adoption.
Highlights
Telemedicine refers to providing different clinical services to patients at a distance as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO)
We conducted this study aimed at assessing the knowledge, applicability, and barriers of telemedicine implementation among healthcare workers from
Medical students Good medical Accurate clinical Correct clinical Interdisciplinary can be trained on history of the diagnosis examination consults remote health patient service
Summary
Telemedicine refers to providing different clinical services to patients at a distance as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). The first form is named asynchronous telemedicine, which involves the exchange of prerecorded information between two or more persons present at different times for example an email or a smartphone application messages. This is in contrast to real-time or synchronous telemedicine which necessitates the simultaneous presence of the two involved persons at the same time for concurrent data exchange as in case of video calls [4]. In both synchronous and asynchronous telemedicine, relevant data can be exchanged via different forms, such as text message, audio notes, videos, or photos. We conducted this study to assess the usefulness of telemedicine application and the different barriers hindering its utilization in our community
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