Evaluating an App for Digital Medical History Taking in Urgent Care Practices: Study Protocol of the Cluster-randomized Interventional Trial 'DASI'

Overview

Journal BMC Prim Care

Specialties Health Services
Public Health

Date 2023 Apr 27

PMID 37106447

Authors

Eva Maria Noack

Dagmar Zajontz

Tim Friede

Kai Antweiler

Eva Hummers

Tobias Schmidt

Lea Roddewig

Dominik Schroder

Frank Muller

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: In out-of-hours urgent care practices in Germany, physicians of different specialties care for a large number of patients, most of all unknown to them, resulting in a high workload and challenging diagnostic decision-making. As there is no common patient file, physicians have no information about patients' previous conditions or received treatments. In this setting, a digital tool for medical history taking could improve the quality of medical care. This study aims to implement and evaluate a software application (app) that takes a structured symptom-oriented medical history from patients in urgent care settings.

Methods: We conduct a time-cluster-randomized trial in two out-of-hours urgent care practices in Germany for 12 consecutive months. Each week during the study defines a cluster. We will compare participants with (intervention group) and without app use (control group) prior to consultation and provision of the self-reported information for the physician. We expect the app to improve diagnostic accuracy (primary outcome), reduce physicians' perceived diagnostic uncertainty, and increase patients' satisfaction and the satisfaction with communication of both physician and patient (secondary outcomes).

Discussion: While similar tools have only been subject to small-scale pilot studies surveying feasibility and usability, the present study uses a rigorous study design to measure outcomes that are directly associated with the quality of delivered care.

Trial Registration: The study was registered at the German Clinical Trials Register (No. DRKS00026659 registered Nov 03 2021. World Health Organization Trial Registration Data Set, https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx? TrialID = DRKS00026659.

Citing Articles

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Gibelli F, Bailo P, Pesel G, Ricci G Clin Pract. 2024; 14(4):1196-1213.

PMID: 39051289 PMC: 11270254. DOI: 10.3390/clinpract14040095.

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