The Final version of the Integrated Investigation Project.

INTEGRATED INVESTIGATION HYPOTHESIS 3

Integrated Investigation Hypothesis: The effectiveness of the Telehealth Model

COVID-19 pandemic changed life as many people knew it. Due to the nature and transmission of the diseases, governments instituted measures that curbed movement. Cities were put under lockdowns and the public was instructed to stay indoors unless going out for supplies. Consequentially, very few people in need of health services visited health care centers. Only people with serious medical conditions and those suspected of having the COVID-19 diseases visited hospitals. To ensure that health services were available even when people could not visit hospitals, health care centers and hospitals adopted and implemented telehealth. Some individuals believe that telehealth is effective at handling the majority of minor health complications. Some are of the contrary opinion.

To establish whether telehealth is an effective health model that can be compared to physical physician visits an investigation will be carried out. To conduct the test, the research team will approach one of the local hospitals that have implemented telehealth and request to carry out the investigation. The hospital will offer data on at least fifteen patients suffering from similar conditions but on different treatment models; telehealth and physical physician visits. The data will prove if the two models are equal in health care services provision. The expected outcome of the investigation is that telehealth is an effective model for the treating of minor illness just as physical physician visits.

Comment :

I like your idea; however, unless you already have a relationship with a hospital AND you fill out a ton of paperwork concerning protecting privacy, you are going to have a TON of roadblocks and hurdles for this study. This is NOT a criticism of your idea. It is just me telling you that the amount of work and legal clearance required to get this idea off the ground is more than I am expecting for the students. I think an easier (and better) idea based upon your initial ideas would be a hypothesis that sounds like: "do undergraduates feel that telehealth is as useful (or trustworthy or anything else that you may like to add here) as in-person healthcare?" This study would be a bit different that the other practice TTests we've done, but not different enough that is is difficult. Basically, you would be comparing people's opinions of in-person health care to telemedicine. Your survey would be two questions that are both "sliding-scale" type questions: (1) "on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is "not at all" and 5 is "absolutely", how useful do you feel telehealth medicine is?' and (2) "on a scale..., how useful do your feel in-person health care is?"

Timothy Schmalz, Feb 14 at 3:30pm

This is a lot... I know. You are free to dismiss everything I wrote or change it some or just accept whatever I wrote. Like I said above, I would rather you avoided trying to communicate with the actual healthcare infrastructure - especially after this past year of stress and pain. I believe that hospitals simply not interested in providing personal data to a (random) undergraduate student. Nothing personal. Please talk with me about this project and we can work something out.