The administrative burden on physicians and technicians for organizing international telemedicine conferences: utility of a shared program management system in an international telemedicine network.

Background: The use of international telemedicine conferences for doctor-to-doctor education has increased following the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic to ensure health and safety. Previous studies have shown that administrative tasks are an obstacle to promoting international telemedicine conferences but have not identified the type of system needed to alleviate this burden. Objective: The Asia-Pacific Advanced Network Medical Working Group (APAN-MWG) is an international telemedicine network that includes 1171 medical institutions and 3653 members as of July 21, 2021. The APAN-MWG has supported international telemedicine conferences since 2005 and implemented a program management system in 2014. The present study explores the conference organizers' tasks and evaluates the APAN-MWG management system through a survey of organizers. Methods: We developed a system called med-hok for managing conference programs, international medical institutions, and their members. We investigated all event programs using the med-hok system from June 3, 2015 to July 21, 2021. The target samples included 64 conference programs in 12 series hosted by 13 program organizers. The effectiveness of the system was evaluated using a four-point Likert scale (very good, good, poor, and very poor). The User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) was used to assess user experience. Results: The survey response rate of the program organizers, who hosted 11 different program series in 7 Asian countries, was 92% (12/13). The administrative tasks for managing the programs were primarily handled by physicians (67%, 8/12), followed by technicians (17%, 2/12). The average program scope encompassed 7 countries, 10 institutions, and 44 members. The largest program comprised 194 members from 49 institutions in 25 countries and was managed by two physicians and one technician. Most program organizers (8/12, 67%) indicated that verifying member information was the most burdensome aspect of organizing teleconferences. Over 90% of respondents positively evaluated med-hok in the following areas: "Confirmation of institution information," "Confirmation of member information," "Confirmation of technical information," "Maintaining the latest status of the program," "Announcing and publicizing the event," and "Formatting and correcting misspellings." They rated user experience positively for all aspects (attractiveness: 1.22; practical quality: 1.42; and hedonic quality: 1.24). Conclusions: Many tasks of organizing casual international telemedicine conferences are handled by physicians and technicians with no operating funds or staff, unlike those in large academic conferences. The proposed system was found to help program organizers manage participants and communicate information effectively. These findings suggest that international telemedicine networks should implement an administrative support system to conduct program operations efficiently.

Barriers to International Telemedicine Conferencing: A Survey of the National University Hospital Council of Japan.

Introduction: Telemedicine conferencing is expected to become commonly used internationally. However, national reports on internationally related telemedicine are limited, and related activities and challenges in each country are unclear. In this study, we aimed to clarify the current status and barriers to international telemedicine conferencing in Japan. Methods: The questionnaire was sent to the Internationalization Project Team (I-PT) representatives in all 43 Japanese National University Hospitals. The total of 167 assigned staff comprised 86 medical staff in charge of internationalization (MI) and 81 technical staff in telemedicine (TT). Results: The response rate was 93% (40/43 universities) from 88 staff (44 MI and 44 TT). Most respondents (75%) stated that they had not been active in international telemedicine conferencing during the past 3 years, although a videoconferencing system was installed in 93% of universities. A total of 65% respondents felt that barriers to promoting telemedicine and conferencing existed. Most (43%) respondents reported staff shortage as the most serious barrier overall. Five TT (19%) felt that the most serious barrier was difficulty with English communication, although no MI selected this as a barrier. More MI than TT felt that technical issues were the most serious barrier (MI: 4/29, TT: 1/27). Conclusions: International telemedicine conferencing was found to be insufficiently active in I-PT of Japan, although the installed equipment and technical expertise of TT seemed adequate. This indicates that merely assigning MI and TT to an I-PT is not enough and that improved cooperation between both MI and TT at each university hospital is needed. Establishment of a structured international telemedicine center in each university hospital is to be suggested to accelerate the activities in Japan.

Development of Quality of Life Questionnaire for Patients with Parkinson's Disease Undergoing STN-DBS.

In device-aided therapy (DAT) for Parkinson's disease (PD), factors such as device-related adverse effects, psychological and lifestyle changes, and specific disease progression can affect the quality of life (QoL) of patients with advanced PD. However, there is no existing QoL scale that includes the effects of therapeutic devices. From a semi-structured interview with patients with PD undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), we extracted the content of utterances that were thought to affect the QoL and created a draft questionnaire consisting of 113 items. This questionnaire was administered to 54 other patients undergoing DBS, whose data were examined for reliability and validity by factor analysis, and finally, a 24-item PD QoL questionnaire for patients on DAT (PDQ-DAT) was developed. Presently, the PDQ-DAT is the only scale that can assess the QoL of patients on DAT, including the influence treatment devices have on them. In the future, it might be used to help in shared decision-making in medicine by incorporating the patient's sense of burden and values in the selection of treatment methods.