Telemedicine facilitates medical care for hospitalized patients in quarantine

Background/purpose: Telemedicine is an innovative medical care system that facilitates visual communication between patients and healthcare workers (HCWs), mainly in a community-based setting. We investigated the clinical effectiveness of in-patient telemedicine care for patients in quarantine for the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Methods: We conducted a prospective study to include patients with mild-to-moderate severity of COVID-19 and their primary-care HCWs. Patients were stratified into the "telemedicine" group and the "standard-care" group. The telemedicine group received additional telemedicine communications and wearable devices for vital signs monitoring during hospitalization. The primary endpoint was the usability of the telemedicine system assessed by the modified telehealth usability questionnaire (TUQ) on a 7-point ordinal Likert scale. The secondary endpoints were the outcomes of COVID-19.

Results: Overall, we included 30 and 48 patients in the respective standard-care group and telemedicine group. In addition, 31 primary care residents and 56 nurses were included in the HCW groups. For all participants, the modified TUQ responses in the categories of usefulness (6.2), ease of use (6.1), effectiveness (6.0), and satisfaction (6.1) were significantly greater than 5 (somewhat agree), except for the reliability sectors (5.3). The telemedicine group liked the telemedicine system significantly more than the HCWs. The doctors scored significantly higher than the nurses in the categories of effectiveness and satisfaction of the telemedicine systems. The outcomes of COVID-19 were comparable between the telemedicine and the standard-care group.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated the clinical effectiveness and satisfaction of the telemedicine for the care of quarantined COVID-19 patients during hospitalization.