Awareness, willingness, and readiness towards Tele-monitoring technology to support diabetic patient management and their associated factors among physicians and nurses at the University of Gondar and Tibebe Ghion specialized teaching hospitals in the Amhara region, Northwest Ethiopia 2020.

Abstract

Abstract Background: Tele-monitoring(TM) technology has a great potential in the management of chronically ill patients and could help to improve their quality of life while reducing healthcare costs and care providers overload. It is important to assess the acceptance level of care providers to use and maximize to benefit of TM technology in the patient care. Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the awareness, willingness, and readiness of care providers to support diabetes patients through TM technologies. Method: An institution based cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted on 423 study participants from February to march 2020 at 2 teaching hospitals in northwest Ethiopia. A pretested self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the required data. The data were entered using Epi-data version 4.6 and the analysis were done using STATA version 14. Other than descriptive statistics, Binary logistic regression analysis method was used to identify factors associated with awareness. In addition, negative binomial regression method was used to identify factors associated with willingness. Furthermore, partial proportional odds model was used to identify factors associated with readiness toward TM. Result: A total of 406 care providers (69.7%, n= 283 nurses and 30.3%, n=123 physicians) were completed survey. High proportion of participants owned a computer (66%) or a smartphone (80%). Only 38.7% of Participants have heard about TM, but a majority of participants were optimistic to use voice call (74.4%), text message (62.1%), video conference (61.3%), e-mail (60.6%) and social media (57.4%) as a source of communication to support patients. When it came to readiness, 25.1% them showed moderate readiness toward TM. Among other factors participants technical skill, access to basic technologies, and attitude were significantly associated with all outcome variables. Conclusion and recommendation: the finding of this study showed that favorable attitude, having smartphone or computer and good technical skill were a positive factors. These factors can improve the acceptance and awareness of TM among care providers Keywords: Tele-monitoring, physicians, nurses, awareness, willingness, readiness and Ethiopia