Assessing Public Perceptions of Virtual Primary Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Italy: A Topic Modeling Approach

Felix Machleid, Roberto Fernandez Crespo, Kelsey Flott, Saira Ghafur, Ara Darzi, Erik Mayer and Ana Luisa Neves

SAGE Open, 2024, vol. 14, issue 3, 21582440241263147

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has driven the transition from face-to-face visits to virtual care delivery. In this study, we explore patients’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of using virtual primary care technologies during the pandemic, using machine learning approaches. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in August 2020 in Italy, Sweden, Germany, and the UK. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was used to identify themes of two open-ended questions. Comparisons between participant characteristics were made using Wilcoxon rank-sum test. 6,331 participants were included (51.7% female; 42.4% +55 years; 60.5% white ethnicity; 86.6% low literacy). The benefits extracted included: primary care delivery, infection control, reducing contacts, virtual care, timeliness, patient-doctor interaction, convenience, and safety. Participants from Sweden were most likely to mention “primary care delivery†(UK p  = .007, IT p  = .03, DE p  

Keywords: primary care; telemedicine; COVID-19; topic modeling; Latent Dirichlet Allocation; natural language processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:14:y:2024:i:3:p:21582440241263147

DOI: 10.1177/21582440241263147

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