title: Willingness of Parkinson's disease patients to participate in research using internet-based technology.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Motor impairment and travel time have been shown to be important barriers to recruitment for Parkinson's disease (PD) clinical trials. This study determined whether use of Internet-based video communication for study visits would improve likelihood of participating in PD clinical trials.
  
  
  METHODS
  University of Utah PD clinic patients were invited to complete a survey asking if they would be willing to participate in a hypothetical research study under four different scenarios. McNemar's test was used to test the hypothesis that remote assessments would improve willingness to participate.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Willingness to participate was 101/113 (87%) in the standard scenario. Willingness to participate was highest (93%; p=0.046) with most visits occurring via telemedicine at a local clinic, followed by some visits occurring via telemedicine at a local clinic (91%; p=0.157). Willingness to participate was lower with some (80%; p=0.008) or most (82%; p=0.071) visits occurring by home telemonitoring.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Use of telemedicine may be an acceptable means to improve participation in clinical trials. This would need to be confirmed with the use of a larger-scale inquiry involving rural populations. Future research should assess subject or caregiver comfort and trainability with respect to computer-based technology in the home and systems barriers for wider implementation of telemedicine in neurology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shprecher
authors.forename: Katia
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Noyes
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Biglan
authors.forename: Dongwen
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: E Ray
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Dorsey
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kurlan
authors.forename: Michael Jacob
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Adams
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D045808:Refusal to Participate; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017216:Telemedicine; D014589:Utah