Parental evaluation of a telemonitoring service for children with Type 1 Diabetes

Abstract

Introduction In the past years, we developed a telemonitoring service for young patients affected by Type 1 Diabetes. The service provides data to the clinical staff and offers an important tool to the parents, that are able to oversee in real time their children. The aim of this work was to analyze the parents' perceived usefulness of the service. Methods The service was tested by the parents of 31 children enrolled in a seven-day clinical trial during a summer camp. To study the parents' perception we proposed and analyzed two questionnaires. A baseline questionnaire focused on the daily management and implications of their children's diabetes, while a post-study one measured the perceived benefits of telemonitoring. Questionnaires also included free text comment spaces. Results Analysis of the baseline questionnaires underlined the parents' suffering and fatigue: 51% of total responses showed a negative tendency and the mean value of the perceived quality of life was 64.13 in a 0-100 scale. In the post-study questionnaires about half of the parents believed in a possible improvement adopting telemonitoring. Moreover, the foreseen improvement in quality of life was significant, increasing from 64.13 to 78.39 ( p-value = 0.0001). The analysis of free text comments highlighted an improvement in mood, and parents' commitment was also proved by their willingness to pay for the service (median = 200 euro/year). Discussion A high number of parents appreciated the telemonitoring service and were confident that it could improve communication with physicians as well as the family's own peace of mind.

The most used questionnaires for evaluating telemedicine services

“…The final list of articles showed that the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire (TUQ) (n = 10, 19%) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] and Telemedicine Satisfaction Questionnaire (TSQ) (n = 7, 13%) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26] were the most commonly used. Then, the Service User Technology Acceptability Questionnaire (SUTAQ) (n = 3, 5.5%) [27][28][29], the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) (n = 3, 5.5%) [30][31][32], the Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS) (n = 3, 5.5%) [33][34][35], the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire (n = 3, 5.5%) [36][37][38], the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ) (n = 3, 5.5%) [22,39,40], the Telemedicine Satisfaction and Usefulness Questionnaire (TSUQ) (n = 2, 3.5%) [41,42], the Patient Assessment of Communication during Telemedicine (PACT) questionnaire (n = 2, 3.5%) [43,44], the Post Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) (n = 2, 3.5%) [19,45] and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (n = 2, 3.5%) [46,47] were the most used questionnaires, respectively.…”

Sensor Networks and Personal Health Data Management: Software Engineering Challenges

“…This system takes input from continuous activity monitoring devices (smartwatch or health band), smart devices that are used several times a day (smart scale, blood pressure monitor and blood sugar). Similar systems have been proposed [52][53][54] but a truly functional system is not yet available [55].…”

Diabetes Technology at Camp: A Rich Learning Environment

“…For parents of T1D children, leaving their child at camp is often anxiety-provoking, especially when losing the ability to view the child's glucose trends in real time. Parents who can continue to monitor their child's glucose data remotely have improved moods and quality of life in comparison to those who lost access while their child is at camp (Losiouk et al, 2018).…”