Teleassistance for frail elderly people: A usability and customer satisfaction study

Scientific advances and new information and communication technologies have facilitated the development of services that allow older people to stay at home as long as possible. In this study, we evaluated the usability and the patient satisfaction of a novel telemedicine system. All enrolled participants underwent a teleassistance program, which included remote surveillance and tele-counselling services with different health-care professionals, including nurses. We administered a specific questionnaire to assess the quality of the service and the patient satisfaction, whereas the System Usability Scale was used to evaluate the patient's usability of the system. Our findings showed that telemedicine might be useful in improving health and quality of life of disadvantaged older people, especially if affected by severe comorbidity and living far from health services. Moreover, the patient satisfaction concerning the service was rated as good by the majority of the participants, although the usability rate was not so high.