How satisfactory are empathetic care and robotic assistance in telemedicine services?

ABSTRACT Telemedicine healthcare and assistive robotic technologies are gaining popularity as support systems for traditional healthcare practices. However, there are concerns regarding the use of these digital services due to their lack of empathy and intimacy. This paper investigates the impact of physicians’ empathetic care and telepresence robot assistance on patients’ intimate experience and satisfaction. We employ a multi-method design to achieve our research objective. The first study utilizes a 2 (digital empathetic care: high vs. low) × 2 (telepresence robot assistance: present vs. absent) × 2 (severity of illness: high vs. low) between-subject experimental design involving 287 participants who have used robotic assistance and telemedicine services. The findings from this study confirm that the telepresence robotic assistance and empathetic care by physicians positively impact intimate experience and patient satisfaction significantly more for patients with low severity of illness, thus confirming the significant moderated-moderated mediation effect. The second study employs field data (n = 4629 reviews) to further validate the telepresence robots’ usability in establishing intimate patient experiences in digital settings. The study recommends to healthcare practitioners that empathetic care and robotic assistance are essential factors for building intimate experience and patient satisfaction in telehealthcare services.