ArticleJMIR human factors2023
Development of a Digital Assistant to Support Teleconsultations Between Remote Physicians and Frontline Health Workers in India: User-Centered Design Approach.
Article in JMIR human factors, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- User-Centered Virtual Clinic Services for Remote, Rural, and Underserved Sub-Saharan Africa: Development and Usability Study.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Mapping Nursing Telemedicine Practices: A Scoping Review of Models, Outcomes, and Professional Roles.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2026Review
- Telepathology and Mobile Health System for Province-Wide Pathology Consultation in Henan, China: Retrospective Evaluation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Observational
- A national platform for advancing self-care processes for the most common illnesses and conditions: designing, evaluating, and implementing.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2024Article
- Evaluation and significance of a digital assistant for patient history-taking and physical examination in telemedicine.Oxford open digital health · 2024Article
- The Telemedicine Program Design Canvas: a visual tool for planning telemedicine interventions.Oxford open digital health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMany low- and middle-income countries have adopted telemedicine programs that connect frontline health workers (FHWs) such as nurses, midwives, or community health workers in rural and remote areas with physicians in urban areas to deliver care to patients. By leveraging technology to reduce temporal, financial, and geographical barriers, these health worker-to-physician telemedicine programs have the potential to increase health care quality, expand the specialties available to patients, and reduce the time and cost required to deliver care.
objectiveWe aimed to identify, validate, and prioritize unmet needs in the health care space of health worker-to-physician telemedicine programs and develop and refine a solution that addresses those needs.
methodsWe collected information regarding user needs through ethnographic research, direct observation, and semistructured interviews with 37 stakeholders (n=5, 14% physicians; n=1, 3% public health program manager; n=12, 32% community health workers; and n=19, 51% patients) at 2 telemedicine clinics in rural West Bengal, India. We used the Spiral-Iterative Innovation Model to design and develop a prototype solution to meet these needs.
resultsWe identified 74 unmet needs through our immersion in health worker-to-physician telemedicine programs. We identified a critical unmet need that achieving optimal teleconsultations in low- and middle-income countries often requires shifting tasks such as history taking and physical examination from high-skilled remote physicians to FHWs. To meet this need, we developed a prototype digital assistant that would allow FHWs to assume some of the tasks carried out by remote clinicians. The user needs of multiple stakeholder groups (patients, FHWs, physicians, and health organizations) were incorporated into the design and features of the task-shifting tool. The final prototype was shared with the health workers, physicians, and public health program managers who expressed that the tool would be useful and valuable.
conclusionsThe final prototype that was developed was released as an open-source digital public good and may improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery in health worker-to-physician telemedicine programs.
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