The integration of mHealth technologies in telemedicine during the COVID-19 era: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Telemedicine is a rapidly expanding field of medicine and an alternative method for delivering quality medical care to patients’ fingertips. With the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the use of telemedicine to connect patients and healthcare providers, which has been made possible by mobile health (mHealth) applications. The goal of this study was to compare the satisfaction of patients with telemedicine among mHealth users and non-users. This was a survey-based study that included outpatients from Abu Dhabi. The association between patient satisfaction with telemedicine and use of mHealth technologies was described using regression models. This study included a total of 515 completed responses. The use of mHealth application was significantly associated with ease of booking telemedicine appointments (OR 2.61, 95% CI 1.63–4.18; P < .001), perception of similarity of quality of care between telemedicine consultations and in-person visits (OR 1.81, 95% CI 1.26–2.61; P = .001), and preference for using telemedicine applications over in-person visits during the COVID-19 pandemic (OR 1.74, 95% CI 1.12–2.72; P = .015). Our study results support that the use of mHealth applications is associated with increased patient satisfaction with telemedicine appointments.

Utilization of patient portals: A cross-sectional study investigating associations with mobile app quality

“…Nevertheless, only about 8% of the respondents used remote visits. Similar rates of remote visits were reported in a large-scale study conducted on 197 clinic centers in the US, where 13% had scheduled remote visits instead of in-person visits (40,41). Using remote visits was higher among the subsample of uMARS completers (n = 200), who also used more features than their counterparts.…”

“…Regarding features used, we expected a high frequency of remote visits scheduled through MyChart during the pandemic, as reported in other studies in the Middle East (40,41). Nevertheless, only about 8% of the respondents used remote visits.…”

Public Usage, Perceived Usefulness, and Satisfaction with E-health Services in COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Among the factors that need to be examined is the extent to which people in society use and benefit from the services, find them useful, and feel satisfied. A body of research examined the usage, usefulness, and satisfaction variables as perceived by people using technologies in the COVID-19 pandemic (29)(30)(31)(32)(33). However, few studies have examined the usefulness, satisfaction, and effectiveness of ehealth services provided by healthcare providers.…”

Análise da produção científica sobre os aplicativos de saúde móvel mHealth para educação, tratamento e reabilitação de AVE - Acidente Vascular Encefálico

“…Em virtude da abrangência dos impactos do AVE e considerando-o um agravo não transmissível e de alta incidência mundial e no Brasil, destaca-se que é possível educar as pessoas, realizar a prevenção de riscos e a promoção da saúde por meio de aplicativos de smartphone que começam a popularizar-se nesses últimos anos, sendo estes úteis e provavelmente adequados como tecnologia da informação e comunicação para a difusão da saúde móvel e o aprendizado sobre Acidente Vascular Encefálico (Soares et al, 2022). Essa justificativa se baseia no crescente desenvolvimento e oferta de aplicativos do tipo mHealth, potencializada pela acessibilidade das tecnologias para aplicativos de celulares (Bastawrous et al, 2015), que aliadas às variadas velocidades de conexões de internet, sobretudo aquelas de alta velocidade (Taha et al, 2022), tornaram possíveis conectar pessoas, inclusive pacientes com seus médicos de forma eficaz por meio de mídias tipo texto, áudio e vídeo em questão de segundos, o que proporcionou também o surgimento da telemedicina (Waller & Stotler, 2018). Portanto, há pesquisas que mostram evidências variadas sobre os aplicativos de saúde móvel, em usos pelas populações, que podem lançar mão dessas tecnologias para educação, cuidado, interação e prevenção de Acidente Vascular Encefálico, entre outras doenças, utilizando as diversas possibilidades destas tecnologias móveis inovadoras (Pires et al, 2020), que apresentam tendências de aumentos de uso, aceitabilidade e efetividade conforme documenta a literatura especializada, (Soares et al, 2022), (LeFevre et al, 2017), (EC et al, 2018), (Nimmolrat et al, 2021), (Goumopoulos et al, 2017).…”