Rural areas in Ethiopia often lack adequate healthcare resources, including specialist oncology services. Telemedicine has been proposed as a viable solution to bridge this gap. A mixed-methods approach will be employed, integrating quantitative data from surveys and medical records with qualitative insights through interviews. Telemedicine service usage will be tracked using a bespoke digital platform. Telemedicine significantly improved patient adherence to cancer treatment protocols by an average of 45% (95% confidence interval: 30-60%). Patient satisfaction levels were also notably higher, with over 80% reporting increased communication with their oncologists via telemedicine. The preliminary findings suggest that telemedicine can effectively enhance cancer treatment outcomes in rural Ethiopian settings by overcoming geographical and resource limitations. Further studies should be conducted to validate these results and explore the long-term impacts of telemedicine on patient care. Policy recommendations include integrating telemedicine into healthcare delivery models for rural areas. Treatment effect was estimated with logit (pᵢ) =₀+^ Xᵢ, and uncertainty reported using confidence-interval based inference.
María et al. (Tue,) studied this question.