Socio-demographic characteristics
A total of 423 study participants were selected from six Amhara Region Referral Hospitals for the assessment of knowledge and awareness of telemedicine services among health professionals working in the Amhara region. Four hundred eleven (97.2% response rate) of them were written consented and responded to complete all the questionnaires. Among the study participants, 258(62.8%) of the respondents were male, the mean age of the participants was 29.65+_4.5 SD years and the majority of the respondents were within the age group of 20-29 years. In terms of educational status, most of the respondents were bachelor degree 268 (65.2%). Regarding the professional category’s the respondents 78 (19.0%) medical doctors and 137 (33.3%) were nurses. The mean working experience was 5+_3.3 SD years and more than half 242 (58.9%) of the respondents were within the range of 1-5 years (Table 1).
Exposure of ICT on the knowledge and awareness of telemedicine services
About 249 (60.6%) of the respondent just had an introductory level of ICT exposure, 334 (81.3%) use computer or laptop or smartphone for their work, and from those 306 (91.6%) used for internet access. Almost half 198 (48.2%) of the participants sometimes search information for health care digitations, but 148 (36.0%) of the respondent had not used internet application for telemedicine service at all (Table 2).
Frequency of organization factors on the knowledge and awareness of telemedicine services
According to this study majority of the respondents, 262 (64.0%) had no sufficient computers for their work, 260 (63.3%) of the respondent had internet access within their hospitals and 152 (58.2%) of them has Wi-Fi types of internet access. Similarly 219 (53.3%) of the respondent of health professionals had an information-sharing culture with other health care providers or patients and only 47 (11.4%) of the study participant was attend training on telemedicine systems (Figure 2).
Knowledge of health professionals by the types of telemedicine services
Among study participants on the types of telemedicine services 151 (36.7%) of the respondent knew of communication via telephone, 117 (28.47%) of Store and forward, 104 (25.3%) Remote monitoring, and 63 (15.33%) Online/live (Figure 3).
Clinical application area, common public health area, benefits, and Barriers to the knowledge and awareness of telemedicine services
From the total study participants, the majority 317 (77.1%) had awareness of telemedicine clinical application for Radiology and 212 (51.6%) had awareness on the common public health application area of telemedicine services was for school-based health centers.
In this study, the knowledge of telemedicine services among health professional at referral hospitals 286 (69.6%) of them knew the benefits of telemedicine system to improve the quality of healthcare system and 229 (55.7%) of the respondent to send the patient for better treatment to another hospital (Table 3).
Factors associated with the knowledge of telemedicine services among health professionals.
The variables including gender, Having IT support staff, Information sharing culture, Information source and the awareness of telemedicine services were positively associated with knowledge of telemedicine services among health professionals working at Amhara Region Referral Hospitals.
According to this study, gender was significantly associated with the knowledge of telemedicine services among health professionals. Being male were 1.73 times more likely to have a knowledge of telemedicine services than female (AOR=1.73, 95% CI: [1.06-2.81]). Similarly, health professionals who have IT support staff in their hospitals were 1.87 times more likely knowledgeable on telemedicine services than those health professionals who had no IT support staff (AOR=1.87, 95%CI: [1.06-3.29]).
Information sharing culture was another factor for the knowledge of telemedicine services among health professionals. Health professionals with having information-sharing culture were 3 times more likely to have good knowledge of telemedicine services than those with no information-sharing culture (AOR=3.01, 95% CI: [1.89-4.80]).
Information source was one of the factors that positively associated with knowledge of telemedicine services. Health professionals with using the internet as an information source was were 1.80 times more likely than the counterpart (AOR=1.80, 95%CI: [1.10-2.94]). Additionally, Health professional’s awareness of telemedicine services was strongly associated with the knowledge of telemedicine services. Health professionals who had awareness of telemedicine was 1.35 times more likely knowledgeable than those who had (AOR=1.35, 95% CI [1.03-2.40]) (Table 4).
Factors associated with the awareness of telemedicine services among health professionals
In this study, training on the telemedicine system was significantly associated with the awareness of telemedicine services. Those who attended training on the telemedicine system had 2.33 times more likely to have the awareness of telemedicine services than those who did not attend the training (AOR= 2.33, 95% CI: [1.15-4.72]).
Similarly, the accessibility of computers in their hospitals was another factor affecting the awareness of telemedicine services. Health professionals who had computer access in their hospitals were 1.42 times more likely awarded than those who had no computer access in their hospitals (AOR= 1.42, 95% CI: [1.01-2.35]) (Table 5).