What drives attitude towards telemedicine among families of pediatric patients? A survey.

Background: Telemedicine has been recognized as a way to improve accessibility, quality, and efficiency of care. In view of the introduction of new telemedicine services, we conducted a survey through a self-administered questionnaire among families of children attending the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital IRCCS, a tertiary care children's hospital located in Rome, Italy.

Methods: We investigated sociodemographic data, clinical information, technological profile, attitude towards telemedicine, perceived advantages of telemedicine, fears regarding telemedicine, willingness to use a smartphone app providing telemedicine services and willingness to use a televisit service. Through logistic regression, we explored the effect of sociodemographic and clinical variables and technological profile on willingness of using a telemedicine app and a televisit service.

Results: We enrolled a total of 751 families. Most patients had a high technological profile, 81% had at least one account on a social network. Whatsapp was the most popular messaging service (76%). Seventy-two percent of patients would use an app for telemedicine services and 65% would perform a televisit. Owning a tablet was associated with both outcome variables - respectively: OR 2.216, 95% CI 1.358-3.616 (app) and OR 2.117, 95% CI 1.415-3.168 (televisit). Kind of hospitalization, diagnosis of a chronic disease, disease severity and distance from the health care center were not associated with the outcome variables.

Conclusion: Families of pediatric patients with different clinical problems are keen to embark in telemedicine programs, independently from severity of disease or chronicity, and of distance from the hospital.