LAUSR

Purpose or Objective: Remote healthcare applications have been developing over many years, however clinical implementation has been cautious. As society has embraced technology during the Covid-19 pandemic, the question is: have attitudes towards remote healthcare technology also changed? One particular aspect of healthcare that could be addressed remotely is the collection of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) using a digital voice assistant (DVA) such as the Amazon Echo (Alexa). This could improve both the frequency and quality of data collected. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was developed to evaluate patient and carer opinions on using a DVA to report radiotherapy-related side effects. This was distributed to the adult patients in the radiotherapy department in February 2019 and to the Teenager, Young Adult and Paediatric radiotherapy department in mid 2019. It was redistributed in September 2020, allowing a pre/post Covid-19 comparison. To maximise engagement with the questionnaire, it was decided to ask a small number of simple questions. These four questions sought to ascertain whether the respondent was a patient or carer, respondent age (decade grouping), how knowledgeable they were about the Amazon Echo, and how willing they would be to participate in a hypothetical study in which they would use an Amazon Echo to record the side effects they experienced as a result of their cancer treatment. A comments box was included to allow participants to convey additional information. Results: 85 completed questionnaires were collected in 2019 and 43 in 2020. The median age of the initial survey cohort was 60-69 years old whilst for the second cohort was 50-59 years old. The slight difference in median age of the cohorts is likely a reflection on modifications to clinical practice due to Covid-19. 16% of the initial cohort and 19% of the second cohort were carers. 67% of the initial cohort responded that they had some or good knowledge of Amazon Echo, this increased to 84% in the second cohort (fig. 1). Willingness to participate was highest in the group of patients with good knowledge. 44% of the initial cohort were willing to take part in a study using an Amazon Echo to record side effects, increasing to 58% in the subsequent cohort (fig. 2). However, the percentage of respondents who were not willing to take part also increased from 32% to 37% with a reduction in the number of respondents who didn’t know (25% to 5%). Willingness to participate varied with age. Comments were diverse and included concerns about using technology and data security but also positive comments on the potential to reduce hospital visits. (Figure Presented) Conclusion: Overall, the survey results indicate an increased knowledge of DVA. There was also an increased willingness to engage with a DVA for remote collection of radiotherapy outcome data following the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.