Survey to evaluate clinical benefits and acceptance in international tele-intensive care unit collaboration

Abstract

OBJECTIVES : Tele-intensive care unit (TICU) networks have evolved quickly in recent years and have proved their value in providing care for the critically ill. Objective measures to assess performance and quantify success e.g. clinical and economic outcome parameters are desirable but not easily accessible in international collaboration with very diverse clinical settings and legal prerequisites. Therefore, we initiated a study to evaluate the performance in our tele-intensive care unit network. METHODS : We conducted an online survey addressing clinical staff at ten spoke sites in four countries connected to one TICU hub to assess subjective clinical benefit, acceptance and potential for improvement. RESULTS : The majority of the 30 participants felt well supported clinically and personally, with a high acceptance and trust as well as a positive working relationship in tele-medical collaboration. Ethical principles and data protection were discovered to be persistently of utmost significance in tele-intensive care unit networks. CONCLUSION : International telemedicine in critical care is perceived positively without major differences between diverse health care systems when crossing borders, showing potential for improvement to guide future clinical and research approaches. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY : The study was registered on August 11th, 2023 with the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS-IDDRKS00032246; https://www.drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00032246/details).