Physician perceptions of surveillance: Wearables, Apps, and Chatbots for COVID-19

  1. Alexandra R. Linares
  2. Katrina A. Bramstedt
  3. Mohan M. Chilukuri
  4. Murali P. Doraiswamy

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Abstract

To characterize the global physician community’s opinions on the use of digital tools for COVID-19 public health surveillance and self-surveillance.

Materials and Methods:

Cross-sectional, random, stratified survey done on Sermo, a physician networking platform, between September 9 and 15, 2020. We aimed to sample 1000 physicians divided among the USA, EU, and rest of the world. The survey questioned physicians on the risk-benefit ratio of digital tools, as well as matters of data privacy and trust.

Statistical Analysis Used:

Descriptive statistics examined physicians’ characteristics and opinions by age group, gender, frontline status, and geographic region. ANOVA, t -test, and Chi-square tests with P < 0.05 were viewed as qualitatively different. As this was an exploratory study, we did not adjust for small cell sizes or multiplicity. We used JMP Pro 15 (SAS), as well as Protobi.

Results:

The survey was completed by 1004 physicians with a mean (standard deviation) age of 49.14 (12) years. Enthusiasm was highest for self-monitoring smartwatches (66%) and contact tracing apps (66%) and slightly lower (48-56%) for other tools. Trust was highest for health providers (68%) and lowest for technology companies (30%). Most respondents (69.8%) felt that loosening privacy standards to fight the pandemic would lead to misuse of privacy in the future.

Conclusion:

The survey provides foundational insights into how physicians think of surveillance.

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  1. Version published to 10.4103/digm.digm_28_21
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.26.21256102: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Following informed consent, the English-language survey sampled physicians between September 9 and September 15, 2020 (prior to initiation of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination), with a target sample size of 1000 doctors equally divided between the US, EU, and rest of the world (RoW).
    IRB: This was deemed as exempt research by Duke University Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board.
    Sex as a biological variableGender analyses were restricted to those who categorized themselves as male or female.
    RandomizationStudy sample: To characterize the opinions of physicians on this topic, we analyzed data from a cross-sectional, random, stratified survey of physicians registered with Sermo, a secure digital platform for medical crowdsourcing and anonymous surveys.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and Limitations: This is the first global survey, to our knowledge, to investigate the opinions of physicians about utility, trust, and risks of commonly used public health digital surveillance tools. Our survey data is from a relatively large and diverse sample of verified practicing physicians. Potential limitations include cross-sectional design, limited number of respondents from developing countries, inability to control for all possible confounding variables (e.g., personal medical history, socio-political beliefs, local data privacy regulations, knowledge about digital tools), and inability to deduce causality. Further, physician perceptions may change over time if infection risk and prevalence decrease, due to vaccination and herd immunity. Our findings should be interpreted within this context. Nevertheless, they provide a useful baseline for future surveys. Public Health Implications: Physicians were optimistic but not equally supportive of all surveillance tools suggesting the need for further research on effectiveness. There was also variation in physician opinions by age group. This may in part reflect differences in physician knowledge about emerging technologies and/or risk-benefit analyses, which would benefit from further education. The low level of trust in technology companies to protect personal data suggests that independent entities (governed by stricter privacy laws) should be the gatekeepers of such data. Current regulations fall short of add...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.26.21256102 on medRxiv