Perceptions of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease towards telemedicine: A qualitative systematic...

There are some qualitative studies on the views of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on telemedicine, however, there are few related qualitative systematic reviews.

To systematically review and synthesize qualitative studies involving the perceptions of patients with COPD about telemedicine to understand patients' attitudes and expectations for telemedicine and determine the obstacles and stimulus in the use of telemedicine.

We searched PubMed, Web of Science, MEDLINE, Embase and CINAHL for articles published from January 2000 to December 2020. The data were analysed using thematic synthesis.

We included 20 articles involving 19 studies and 301 patients, and we identified four themes: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived difficulty of use, and perceived uselessness. We found that although patients have different views on telemedicine, most of them have a positive attitude towards it.

The synthesis of views will help us determine the factors that promote or hinder the application of telemedicine and guide the design and implementation of telemedicine in the future.