Acceptance of Telemedicine Compared to In-Person Consultation From the Providers' and Users’ Perspectives: Multicenter, Cross-Sectional Study in Dermatology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Teledermatology is currently finding its place in modern health care worldwide as a rapidly evolving field. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the acceptance of teledermatology compared to in-person consultation from the perspective of patients and professionals. METHODS: This multicenter, cross-sectional pilot study was performed at secondary and tertiary referral centers of dermatology in Switzerland from August 2019 to January 2020. A customized questionnaire addressing demographics and educational data, experience with telemedicine, and presumed willingness to replace in-patient consultations with teledermatology was completed by dermatological patients, dermatologists, and health care workers in dermatology. RESULTS: Among a total of 664 participants, the ones with previous telemedicine experience (171/664, 25.8%) indicated a high level of overall experience with it (patients: 73/106, 68.9%, dermatologists: 6/8, 75.0%, and health care workers: 27/34, 79.4%). Patients, dermatologists, and health care workers were most likely willing to replace in-person consultations with teledermatology for minor health issues (353/512, 68.9%; 37/45, 82.2%; and 89/107, 83.2%, respectively). We observed a higher preference for telemedicine among individuals who have already used telemedicine (patients: P<.001, dermatologists: P=.03, and health care workers, P=.005), as well as among patients with higher educational levels (P=.003). CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that the preference for teledermatology has a high potential to increase over time since previous experience with telemedicine and a higher level of education were associated with a higher willingness to replace in-patient consultations with telemedicine. We assume that minor skin problems are the most promising issue in teledermatology. Our findings emphasize the need for dermatologists to be actively involved in the transition to teledermatology. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04495036; https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04495036.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".