BACKGROUND

Telehealth service is an approach to health care delivery that uses various telecommunication technologies, where the knowledge of the patient plays an important role in its acceptance, preference, and utilization. This study compared telehealth service knowledge among adults who utilized and never-utilized telehealth services and explored factors associated with telehealth knowledge.

METHODS

This comparative cross-sectional study recruited 1252 adults from Bangladesh. The outcome variable of the study was the knowledge of telehealth services. We used convenience sampling approaches to recruit participants. The online questionnaire was distributed via Google Forms through Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. The independent variables of the study were sociodemographic factors and the perceived health status of the participants. The bivariate logistic regression model was used to investigate the association between study variables and the level of knowledge among those who utilized and never-utilized the telehealth service. The data analysis was done using STATA version 16.

RESULTS

In the never-utilized group, 54.41% of participants were male, with an average age of 28.89 years. In the utilized group, 55.77% of the participants were male, with an average age of 30 years. Age, marital status, educational level, student status, and perceived health status were significantly associated with good telehealth knowledge among those who never-utilized the telehealth service. Among the utilized groups, we found that age, marital status, and perceived health status were significantly associated with good knowledge of telehealth services.

CONCLUSIONS

This study emphasizes the importance of addressing the associated factors to improve telehealth knowledge, considering existing variations among adults who utilized and who never-utilize telehealth services.