BACKGROUND
Telemedicine represents an important tool, with potential to reduce the health costs, thus avoiding displacing patients, and even producing best results in the patient care, becoming an important social technology.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis on the design to implementing telehealth boots in the Hospital BP – A Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo aiming to assess the experience both with patients and professionals, and also the acceptability of such tool.
METHODS
It was performed a prospective interventional cross-sectional study with 229 participants, which was divided in two phases: the first of the phases was performed with 40 apparently healthy individuals, aiming to assess the usability, experience and satisfaction of that group for the later safe application in the group with clinical complaints. The second phase included 189 individuals who could have clinical complaints, to assess the adherence, usability, experience and satisfaction both by users and doctors. In both phases of the study, participants answered screening questionnaires (in order to assess the eligibility criteria) and a socioeconomic demographic questionnaire before using the cabin, and a questionnaire contemplating the System Usability Scale (SUS), and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) after using the cabin.
RESULTS
After the data analysis of the first phase, it was observed a good acceptance of the cabin, which allowed to go on with the study towards the second phase. In this phase, it was observed a high usability index (85.97 average) and favorability (9.4 NPS) in the group with clinical complaints, as well as for doctors (usability average index of 67.8 and 8.0 NPS).
CONCLUSIONS
The outcomes of this research allow to assess the feasible expansion of this kind of practice from the point of view of usability, and also that this kind of study may contribute as subsidy to construct public policies with the purpose to expand the access for the Brazilian population to a qualified medical care, promoting the adherence of patients as to the health, thus providing to professionals an extended view of the clinical pictures through the embedded devices, even in areas with scarcity of such type of medical care.