Willingness of Parkinson's disease patients to participate in research using internet-based technology

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.

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.

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.

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.