gms | German Medical Science

Background and status of (inter)national research: Covid-19 challenged existing structures and pathways in the German healthcare system. Many Covid-19 patients were diagnosed and treated by general practitioners (GPs). This required communication of GPs with the local health authority for report of cases, contact tracing, or quarantine. Early surveys showed dissatisfaction with this kind of communication and some local areas reported lack of information [1]. We rapidly implemented a secure instant messaging platform for GPs and local health authorities within two model regions as a proof-of-concept study. There is a lack of studies about instant-messaging in ambulatory care in Germany, which could provide insights into user characteristics. An international review shows, that users of instant messaging in healthcare are more likely to be female and younger, but outcomes weren’t consistent [2]. We aim to assess usage patterns of GPs in the first four weeks of usage to contribute to understanding user characteristics of instant messaging in ambulatory healthcare in Germany.

The project is one of the various projects within egePan Unimed. The focus of egePan Unimed “Development, testing and implementation of regional management structures and processes for evidence-led pandemic management coordinated by university medicine” is to look at the pandemic management concepts in Germany and internationally, to evaluate their practicability with scientific methods and to integrate them into a framework plan.

Question and objective: How are GPs using a secure instant messaging tool for exchange of information about covid-19 in the first 28 days? We aim to distinguish users with higher usage and lower usage, to clarify potential target audiences.

Method: We implemented an application for secure instant messaging in two model regions in Hesse, Germany for GPs and local health authorities. During their first login participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire and to share their usage data via opt-in in the app. In the questionnaire we asked the participants about their age, profession, geographical location, professional experience and digital competence. As participants opened the questionnaire via app we could collect their user-ID as a pseudonym. Therefore, we are able to link the usage data, if shared, with questionnaire data for 34 out of 43 (79%) participating GPs. Usage data was automatically collected. We had no access to any message content. Analysed usage data contains e.g. number of visits, time spent in the app or number of actions. We will analyse usage data of the first 28 days of each participant. We will use descriptive statistics to describe our sample and will group participants according to high or low frequency of usage for regression analysis to explore the relationship between amount of usage, and age and geographical location.

Results will be available at the conference.