Evaluation of Vodafone Telemedicine Program

For more than ten years Vodafone Hellas has funded and supported a telemedicine program in 100 remote and inaccessible areas of Greece. In cooperation with the National Health Service and the Regional Health Directorates, Vodafone addresses to local doctors who are willing to join the program and offers them portable medical equipment as well as necessary supplies for various exams. It also provides them with internet access to enable them to monitor their patients and to store the results of their examinations. In addition, it offers them potential advisory support from cardiologists and pulmonologists of the Athens Medical Center.

The members of ISEB Lab, University of Macedonia, Yiannis Nikolaidis, Associate Professor and George Efthimiades, Ph.D. candidate, accepted the offer to work for the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems of the National Technical University of Athens (ICCS). Their objective was to write an evaluation study of the aforementioned Vodafone Telemedicine Program (VTP). More specifically, the aforementioned researchers undertook a survey and a statistical analysis of its results.

At first, to better understand the operation of VTP and identify points that needed further clarification, researchers conducted personal interviews with doctors who participate in VTP. Moreover, there was nonstop communication with Vidavo S.A., a company which has been responsible for the coordination of the program all these years.

Then, two questionnaires were developed: the first one was addressed to participating doctors, while the other one to patients who were residents of the remote areas that VTP covered. After the trial completion of an indicative number of questionnaires and the necessary corrections on some questions, the survey was carried out. It lasted from November 2015 to February 2016. Subsequently, the information collected through the questionnaires was statistically analyzed by ISEB researchers and the results were presented to Vodafone executives. The following links provide the questionnaires used for the VTP survey.