International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 29:4 (2013), 378–383. c  Cambridge University Press 2013 doi:10.1017/S026646231300041X Assessments Telemedical versus Conventional Heart Patient Monitoring: A Survey Study with German Physicians Lars Klack, Martina Zieﬂe, Wiktoria Wilkowska and Johanna Kluge Human-Computer-Interaction Center at RWTH Aachen University Objectives: In this study, we explored crucial factors that explain a person’s attitude toward and his or her assessment of telemedical systems. Special focus lies on the link between the perspective of physicians (telemedicine users) and technicians (telemedicine designers) to ﬁnd potential barriers hindering the broad application of telemedical systems in hospitals and doctors’ ofﬁces. Methods: A survey among medical professionals (n = 34), technical professionals (n = 39), and a control group (n = 44) was conducted. The collected data were assessed in terms of domain knowledge, attitudes toward telemedicine, and potential implementation barriers. Results: Participants favored the conventional method over telemedical monitoring in regards to privacy, security, and time efﬁciency. In contrast, telemedicine was preferred with reference to efﬁciency of data analysis, long-term care, and emergency adequacy. Signiﬁcant differences between the professional groups were found regarding perceived cost effectiveness, patients’ compliance, privacy protection, and false alarm sensitivity. Medical professionals exhibited the most reluctance toward using telemedical treatments. Conclusions: The perceived drawbacks are attributed to a general uncertainty about the reliability of telemedical systems, in combination with concerns about personal data privacy, security, and loss of control. The reported fear of not being able to correctly use and handle the systems assumes a low usability of devices. To acquaint medical professionals with the beneﬁts and limitations of telemedical systems, telemonitoring and tele-treatment should be included in the education of medical personnel at an early stage. Keywords: Technology acceptance, Telemedicine assessment, Medical professionals The rapid demographic change and increased urbanization in western societies bring along problems with healthcare avail- ability. The growing discrepancy between rising numbers of pa- tients and declining numbers of caregivers leads to considerable shortcomings in availability, accessibility, and quality of health care. Furthermore, the demographic shift entails an increase of age-related chronic diseases with considerable requirements regarding long-term treatment and health-monitoring (1). Telemedicine and telemonitoring seem to be promising ap- proaches in this context because they provide advantages for both patients and physicians regarding time and travel efforts. Fast and easy accessibility is an issue for patients requiring reg- ular follow-ups and long-term monitoring, such as heart disease and diabetes patients (2). It has been reported that telemedicine can improve cost effectiveness in many cases (3;4). However, this is not a universal ﬁnding as the numbers of cases reporting cost efﬁciency and those reporting no cost efﬁciency are almost identical Despite the advantages of telemedicine, the implementation rate of such systems has been low (5;6). Although telemedicine applications have been successfully tested in small case studies most of them have failed to survive beyond research phase. This Authors thank all professionals for study participation. Simon Himmel and Luisa Bremen supported this research. The work was funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. raises the question, why a technology, which has proven to be a viable method of providing adequate health care when faced with logistic barriers, is not used more often in hospitals and doctors’ ofﬁces (4). Most of the approaches concerned with the distribution and adoption process of telemedicine focus on technical aspects of telemedical systems in a clinical environment thereby neglect- ing the human perspective (2;7;8). Studies that include the pa- tients’ perspectives show that the cognitive-emotional situation of the care receivers is of crucial importance for the acceptance of telemedicine (9–13). However, no previous study examines the engineers’ (de- velopers) and physicians’ (operators) perspectives on the use- fulness and practicality of telemedicine. This study aims at answering the following research ques- tions: (i) Is there a relation between a person’s professional do- main knowledge (medical/ technical/neither medical nor techni- cal) and the assessment of telemedical monitoring systems? (ii) What are potential barriers regarding the usage of telemedical systems for patients in hospitals and doctors’ ofﬁces? MATERIALS AND METHODS Instrument To answer the research questions, a questionnaire had been developed. The relevance of the questions had been taken from interviews with medical and technical professionals carried out 378