Previously submitted to: JMIR Formative Research (no longer under consideration since Apr 25, 2023)
Date Submitted: Mar 22, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Egyptian transition towards Telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic: Cross-sectional survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Telemedicine is representing the future of medical services. It shows many advantages and promising opportunities. It has been tried in different medical specialties. The COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced the establishment of telemedicine services worldwide. Low and middle-income countries such as Egypt are still new to these technologies.
Objective:
Provide a snapshot of data on the current situation in Egypt and assess its transition towards more integrated telemedicine services from the physicians' perspective.
Methods:
An online and offline questionnaire was filled out by cardiologists from different institutions in Egypt asking about their experience on telemedicine (TM) services in Egypt.
Results:
A total of 66 cardiology physicians have fully responded to the questionnaire on telemedicine in Egypt. 57.6% said TM helped with emergent situations. 66.7% of them said lack of integrated assessment tools is a challenge hindering the transition towards TM in Egypt. 95.5% of doctors believe that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the usage of TM. 77.3% of them believe that there should be guidelines and protocols to guide the online consultation process.
Conclusions:
Despite the fact this snapshot data has revealed that the Egyptian experience in TM service is far from the standard, it has showed that collaborative effort from all the stakeholders is mandatory. The COVID- 19 pandemic has enhanced the transition process, but some obstacles are still needed to overcome.
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