Acceptance of telemedicine and new media: a survey of Austrian medical students.

Telemedicine and new media (e.g. the Internet, tele-teaching and tele-learning) are increasingly being used in medicine. We surveyed the awareness and acceptance of these developments on the part of medical students (n =750) at the University of Innsbruck. A 16-item questionnaire was handed out in randomly chosen medical classes and collected immediately after completion, which resulted in a response rate of 99.9%. Nearly all of the students used the Internet regularly (68%) or at least sometimes (30%). Telemedicine was already known to most of the students, mainly from articles in magazines and newspapers (41%), but the great majority of them (95%) reported that they did not know about the telemedicine lectures offered by the University of Innsbruck. Most students (75%) thought that they would benefit from tele-teaching or tele-learning. The survey suggested that medical schools should offer more special lectures, as well as undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications in telemedicine. The marketing of such opportunities needs to be improved.