This Reading Room is a collaboration between MedPage Today® and:
Some cancer patients with limited internet access and low digital literacy nevertheless successfully adopted and adapted to telehealth visits, and the reasons weren't always what one would expect, according to a study in JCO Oncology Practice.
Pravesh Sharma, MD, of the Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and other Mayo colleagues conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 24 patients who lived in areas with limited access to high-speed internet. The average age of participants was 71, half were female, and all were white.
"While limited BB [broadband] access is often assumed to preclude video telehealth visit (VTV) adoption, our cohort of patients with cancer living in low-BB areas revealed an unexpected pattern: a subset of patients residing in low-BB areas successfully transitioned to VTV, whereas others remained disengaged," the team wrote. "The findings of the qualitative study show that traditional factors contributing to the digital divide, like internet access, device availability, and digital literacy, may not be the main obstacles to adopting VTVs."
Sharma, co-director of the Rural Health Program, elaborated on the findings in the following interview.
