title: Awareness, Interest, and Preferences of Primary Care Providers in Using Point-of-Care Cancer Screening Technology.
abstract: Well-developed point-of-care (POC) cancer screening tools have the potential to provide better cancer care to patients in both developed and developing countries. However, new medical technology will not be adopted by medical providers unless it addresses a population's existing needs and end-users' preferences. The goals of our study were to assess primary care providers' level of awareness, interest, and preferences in using POC cancer screening technology in their practice and to provide guidelines to biomedical engineers for future POC technology development. A total of 350 primary care providers completed a one-time self-administered online survey, which took approximately 10 minutes to complete. A $50 Amazon gift card was given as an honorarium for the first 100 respondents to encourage participation. The description of POC cancer screening technology was provided in the beginning of the survey to ensure all participants had a basic understanding of what constitutes POC technology. More than half of the participants (57%) stated that they heard of the term "POC technology" for the first time when they took the survey. However, almost all of the participants (97%) stated they were either "very interested" (68%) or "somewhat interested" (29%) in using POC cancer screening technology in their practice. Demographic characteristics such as the length of being in the practice of medicine, the percentage of patients on Medicaid, and the average number of patients per day were not shown to be associated with the level of interest in using POC. These data show that there is a great interest in POC cancer screening technology utilization among this population of primary care providers and vast room for future investigations to further understand the interest and preferences in using POC cancer technology in practice. Ensuring that the benefits of new technology outweigh the costs will maximize the likelihood it will be used by medical providers and patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Chloe S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vanture
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Catherine M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Klapperich
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Catharine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.|Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Franklin W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D002983:Clinical Competence; D055088:Early Detection of Cancer / Q000379:methods*; D015981:Epidemiologic Factors; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013672:Technology