Awareness and Attitude of Healthcare Workers towards Telehealth in Cairo, Egypt.

Shoman, Sara; Emara, Tamer; Saber, Heba Gamal; Allam, Mohamed Farouk

BACKGROUND Telehealth is delivering health care services remote from health-care facilities using telecommunications. Egypt is aiming for Universal Health Coverage; this increases the demand of telehealth in routine health services. OBJECTIVE to measure the awareness of telehealth health care workers of primary health care units and to evaluate the effect of an orientation program on primary health care workers' awareness and acceptance of application of telehealth. METHODOLOGY This was an intervention study among health care workers. A self-administrated valid questionnaire for health care workers was designed, the questionnaire consists of different domains of knowledge in addition to advantages, disadvantages, security and necessity perceptions. Each domain consists of Likert scale questions of 5 points. The questions were scored as the worst answer (1) and the best (5). A total of 109 questionnaires were filled by participants who spent at least 6 months in primary health care units. Then the health care workers were attended an orientation program and the questionnaire was re-filled once more. A total of 104 was recollected. Ethical issues were considered. RESULTS 50.5% of health care workers were aware of telehealth; 66.7% of health care workers with master's degree were aware of telehealth in comparison to 31.8% among those with a diploma, 64.3% of physicians were aware of telehealth while 9.6% of nurses were aware. The score of knowledge and attitude increased from 130±23.538 to 156.49±18.456 after the educational program. CONCLUSION Half of health care workers were aware of telehealth; the orientation improved the Healthcare Workers' knowledge and attitude.