Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Mar 19, 2025
Date Accepted: Aug 6, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Exploring the preferences and behavioural trends of e-patients in psychosomatics towards telemedicine during and post COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a rapid growth of telemedicine and e-health services, with an increasing number of e-patients utilizing the internet for self-informed decision-making.
Objective:
Investigations on patient adoption and preferences of telemedicine due to the pandemic are still few.
Methods:
In a cross-sectional study, 150 adult patients (>18 years) of the psychosomatic outpatient department were invited to complete an ad hoc questionnaire to identify e-patients' preferences related to communication, information-seeking behaviour, subjective explanations, and post-pandemic preferences. Group comparisons and a multiple linear regression were applied using SPSS.
Results:
The study revealed a slight increase in online-based communication between patients and caregivers, as well as among patient–patient interactions. Significant group differences were observed concerning social media correspondence (χ2¬ = 17.44, p < .001) in regard to patient age and for live video consultations (χ2¬ = 70.17, p < .001) in regard to gender. For both age and gender, significant group differences were found for medical videos (age χ2¬ = 6.36, p = .042; gender χ2¬ = 76.70, p < .001). Age, gender, and preferences for live video consultations were identified as significant predictors (F = 14.195, p < .001, R² = 0.299) explaining patients' future preferences for on-site versus online consultations.
Conclusions:
Even though a slight increase in online-based communication was detected, a resilience of patient–caregiver and patient–patient communication indicated a relative stability in challenging circumstances. Elderly, and female patients expressed preference for on-site consultations, emphasizing the significance of in-person care. Male patients demonstrated greater openness towards online consultations, indicating the potential for expansion of telemedicine services. Identifying preferences are core essentials for catering for future e-health implementations to diverse patient needs and for designing care offerings. Incorporating these findings can enhance patient engagement and satisfaction in the evolving landscape of e-health services for better healthcare outcomes. Clinical Trial: osf.io/6nm9s
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.