Telemedicine Booths for Screening Cardiovascular Risk Factors: Prospective Multicenter Study.

Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension often remain undetected and untreated. This was particularly problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic when there were fewer in-person medical consultations.

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether health screening using a telemedicine booth would have an impact on people's medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Health screening was run using a telemedicine booth (the consult station) that was placed in three different vaccination centers in northern France between July 2021 and September 2021. Participants followed a series of instructions to obtain various measures, including their blood pressure, BMI, and heart rate. If any measures were found to be outside of the normal range, participants were advised to consult a doctor. After 3 months, the participants with abnormal readings were contacted by telephone and were asked a series of standardized questions. The primary outcome was the percentage of respondents who reported that they had consulted a doctor since the health check.

Results: Approximately 6000 people attended the 3 vaccination centers over the study period. Of these, around 2500 used the consult station. A total of 1333 participants (53.3%) were found to have abnormal readings, which mostly concerned their blood pressure, heart rate, or BMI. There were 638 participants who responded to the follow-up call, and 234 of these (37%) reported that they had consulted a doctor since the health check. However, 158 of the 638 respondents (24.8%) reported that they would have consulted a doctor even without the screening.

Conclusions: We succeeded in screening large numbers of people for cardiovascular risk factors during the COVID-19 pandemic by using a telemedicine booth. Although relatively few follow-up call respondents reported that they went on to consult a physician, the screening would nevertheless have raised people's awareness of their cardiovascular risk factors.