A telemedicine survey among Milan doctors

We surveyed physicians' attitudes to the use of telemedicine. A questionnaire was sent to 2987 Italian physicians and 361 responded (12%). The topics covered by the survey were: current telemedicine technology knowledge/ usage level; general attitude towards telemedicine applications; perceived efficacy of telemedicine in enhancing quality of care; and intention to use telemedicine. In all, 83% of respondents had heard about telemedicine. Some doctors considered telemedicine to be of limited interest and many physicians were not convinced that it could improve clinical practice. These beliefs were more common among doctors of higher seniority, probably because they are more reluctant to accept change. To reduce such negative evaluations, better dissemination of information about the state of the art of research and development in telemedicine is needed. A logistic regression model was used to determine which factors influenced the intention to use telemedicine. The final model predicted 80% of the responses correctly.