Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jan 23, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 16, 2022 - Feb 3, 2022
Date Accepted: Jun 27, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Public Interest and Accessibility of Telehealth in Japan: Retrospective Analysis using Google Trends and National Surveillance
ABSTRACT
Background:
Recently, the use of telehealth to combat against COVID-19 gained interest around the world. Although many countries gained interest in telehealth, public interest of telehealth in Japan is unknown. Also, various telehealth mobile applications became available to care patients in a remote environment, but the accessibility between endemic and non-endemic region are unknown.
Objective:
We aimed to investigate the public interest of telehealth between first pandemic wave and after along with the accessibility of medical institutions using telehealth between endemic and non-endemic region in Japan.
Methods:
Using open sources from Google Trend and national data in Japan, we examined the characteristics of sever and death cases along with the association between public interest of telehealth and COVID-19 cases in the first pandemic wave and after. Also, the association of telehealth accessibility and COVID-19 cases in endemic regions and non-endemic regions were investigated.
Results:
Among the 83 weeks consisting 5 pandemic waves, overall mean RSV of telehealth and COVID-19 was 11.3 (8.0 – 14.6) and 30.7 (27.2 – 34.2) respectively. The proportion of sever (26.7 vs 18.2 P < .001) and death (5.3 vs 1.0 P < .001), RSV of telehealth (33.1 vs 7.3 P < .001) and COVID-19 (52.1 vs 26.3 P < .001) were significantly higher in the first wave. In the correlation analysis, the public interest of telehealth had a strong positive correlation in the first wave (r= 0.899, P < .001) but had week negative correlation overall (r= -0.300, P = .005). In Japan, the accessibility of telehealth using mobile apps was significantly higher in endemic regions compared to non-endemic regions in both hospitals (3.8% vs 2.0% P = .004) and general clinics (5.2% vs 3.1% P < .001). In the regional correlation analysis, telehealth accessibility using mobile apps had positive correlation in both hospital (r= 0.497, P < .001) and general clinic (r= 0.629, P < .001).
Conclusions:
In Japan, there was a positive regional correlation between mobile telehealth app accessibility. We revealed that the telehealth with mobile app is more likely to be implemented in endemic regions. Further study about the actual use of telehealth and its effect after the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be investigated.
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