Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jun 8;7(6):e13772.
doi: 10.2196/13772.

Factors Determining Patients' Choice Between Mobile Health and Telemedicine: Predictive Analytics Assessment

Saif Khairat  1   2 , Songzi Liu  3 , Tanzila Zaman  1 , Barbara Edson  4 , Robert Gianforcaro  4
Affiliations

Factors Determining Patients' Choice Between Mobile Health and Telemedicine: Predictive Analytics Assessment

Saif Khairat et al. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. .

Abstract

Background: The solution to the growing problem of rural residents lacking health care access may be found in the use of telemedicine and mobile health (mHealth). Using mHealth or telemedicine allows patients from rural or remote areas to have better access to health care.

Objective: The objective of this study was to understand factors influencing the choice of communication medium for receiving care, through the analysis of mHealth versus telemedicine encounters with a virtual urgent clinic.

Methods: We conducted a postdeployment evaluation of a new virtual health care service, Virtual Urgent Clinic, which uses mHealth and telemedicine modalities to provide patient care. We used a multinomial logistic model to test the significance and predictive power of a set of features in determining patients' preferred method of telecare encounters-a nominal outcome variable of two levels (mHealth and telemedicine).

Results: Postdeployment, 1403 encounters were recorded, of which 1228 (87.53%) were completed with mHealth and 175 (12.47%) were telemedicine encounters. Patients' sex (P=.004) and setting (P<.001) were the most predictive determinants of their preferred method of telecare delivery, with significantly small P values of less than .01. Pearson chi-square test returned a strong indication of dependency between chief concern and encounter mediums, with an extremely small P<.001. Of the 169 mHealth patients who responded to the survey, 154 (91.1%) were satisfied by their encounter, compared with 31 of 35 (89%) telemedicine patients.

Conclusions: We studied factors influencing patients' choice of communication medium, either mHealth or telemedicine, for a virtual care clinic. Sex and geographic location, as well as their chief concern, were strong predictors of patients' choice of communication medium for their urgent care needs. This study suggests providing the option of mHealth or telemedicine to patients, and suggesting which medium would be a better fit for the patient based on their characteristics.

Keywords: mHealth; predictive analytics; telemedicine; urgent care.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of encounter durations by encounter methods.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Self-reported overall experience satisfaction ratings. mHealth: mobile health.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Alternative care-seeking choices of mobile health (mHealth) and telemedicine users.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Wilson NW, Couper ID, De Vries E, Reid S, Fish T, Marais BJ. A critical review of interventions to redress the inequitable distribution of healthcare professionals to rural and remote areas. Rural Remote Health. 2009;9(2):1060. http://www.rrh.org.au/articles/subviewnew.asp?ArticleID=1060 1060 - PubMed
    1. America Counts Staff One in five Americans live in rural areas. 2017. Aug 9, [2019-05-23]. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html .
    1. Laditka JN, Laditka SB, Probst JC. Health care access in rural areas: evidence that hospitalization for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions in the United States may increase with the level of rurality. Health Place. 2009 Sep;15(3):731–40. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2008.12.007.S1353-8292(09)00005-7 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Anderson TJ, Saman DM, Lipsky MS, Lutfiyya MN. A cross-sectional study on health differences between rural and non-rural U.S. counties using the County Health Rankings. BMC Health Serv Res. 2015 Oct 01;15:441. doi: 10.1186/s12913-015-1053-3. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-015-1... 10.1186/s12913-015-1053-3 - DOI - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brems C, Johnson ME, Warner TD, Roberts LW. Barriers to healthcare as reported by rural and urban interprofessional providers. J Interprof Care. 2006 Mar;20(2):105–18. doi: 10.1080/13561820600622208.V647W200M450H812 - DOI - PubMed