Abstract
Background: Motor impairment and travel time have been shown to be important barriers to recruitment for Parkinson's disease (PD) clinical trials. This study determined whether use of Internet-based video communication for study visits would improve likelihood of participating in PD clinical trials. Subjects and Methods: University of Utah PD clinic patients were invited to complete a survey asking if they would be willing to participate in a hypothetical research study under four different scenarios. McNemar's test was used to test the hypothesis that remote assessments would improve willingness to participate. Results: Willingness to participate was 101/113 (87%) in the standard scenario. Willingness to participate was highest (93%; p=0.046) with most visits occurring via telemedicine at a local clinic, followed by some visits occurring via telemedicine at a local clinic (91%; p=0.157). Willingness to participate was lower with some (80%; p=0.008) or most (82%; p=0.071) visits occurring by home telemonitoring. Conclusions: Use of telemedicine may be an acceptable means to improve participation in clinical trials. This would need to be confirmed with the use of a larger-scale inquiry involving rural populations. Future research should assess subject or caregiver comfort and trainability with respect to computer-based technology in the home and systems barriers for wider implementation of telemedicine in neurology.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 684-687 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Telemedicine and e-Health |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 1 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Parkinson's disease
- clinical trials
- neurodegenerative disease
- telemedicine
- telemonitoring
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health Informatics
- Health Information Management