Digital communication assistance tool for non-German speaking patients in border refugee camp Friedland - a feasibility study
Organizational Data
- DRKS-ID:
- DRKS00013076
- Recruitment Status:
- Recruiting complete, study complete
- Date of registration in DRKS:
- 2017-09-29
- Last update in DRKS:
- 2020-08-13
- Registration type:
- Prospective
Acronym/abbreviation of the study
DICTUM-Friedland
URL of the study
http://www.dictum.med.uni-goettingen.de/index.html
Brief summary in lay language
Communication with patients who cannot speak German or speak at best very little is considered one of the biggest challenges facing health care professionals in Germany. The digital communication assistance tool facilitates collecting a structured medical history from patients in 13 languages and dialects. This happens by giving intuitive input on a Tablet PC, before meeting the doctor (e.g. while in the waiting room). Right after that the doctor gets a translated summary of the history. The digital communication assistance tool will be tested and evaluated in the primary healthcare center at transit border camp Friedland. A comparison of persons who use this tool and those who do not use it (people who do not speak any of the 13 languages or do not want for other reasons) may serve to illustrate to what extent the tool improves mutual understanding.
Brief summary in scientific language
Communication with patients who cannot speak German or speak at best very little is considered one of the biggest challenges facing health care professionals in Germany. The digital communication assistance tool facilitates collecting a structured medical history from patients in 13 languages and dialects. This happens by giving intuitive input on a Tablet PC, before meeting the doctor (e.g. while in the waiting room). The tool can automatically encode the consultation reason as ICPC-2 code on the basis of the data entered by the patient. Right after that the doctor gets a translated summary of the history. The digital communication assistance tool will be tested and evaluated in the primary healthcare center at transit border camp Friedland. The aim will be to analyze the extent to which the digital communication assistance tool improves mutual understanding. The rates of re-consultation as well as the total costs for the general medical care serve as indicators. In addition, we gather the subjective impression of practitioners and patients by means of different questionnaires and several qualitative interviews. Due to decreasing numbers of refugees and existing recruiting problems, we had to adjust the initially estimated number of cases from 2000 to a calculated number of cases of 880.
Health condition or problem studied
- Free text:
- primary medical care
- Healthy volunteers:
- No Entry
Interventions, Observational Groups
- Arm 1:
- Patients who speak one of the 13 available languages and use the digital communication assistance tool for the purpose of medical history
- Arm 2:
- Patients who do not use the digital communication assistance tool because they do not speak any of the 13 available languages or for other reasons
Endpoints
- Primary outcome:
- What?: Applicability and reliability of the digital communication assistance tool What exactly? Test run without patients: Troubleshooting and verification upon the completeness regarding the questions for medical history When?: 09/2017 (before use in patients) How?: Feedback from doctors (in writing, by telephone and verbal = no scientific question only feedback) AND What exactly? Consistency of medical impression (clinical picture) and software-generated ICPC-2 code When?: During the entire duration oft he project How?: Comparison of the ICPC-2 codes generated by the tool and the medical diagnoses (ICD10)
- Secondary outcome:
- What? Rate of re-consultation, mutual understanding & costs When?: One year after starting the intervention (11/2018, for all patients) How?: Registration at each consultation; questionnaires for patients, doctors and practice staff, qualitative interviews with doctors and practice staff
Study Design
- Purpose:
- Other
- Allocation:
- Non-randomized controlled study
- Control:
-
- Control group receives no treatment
- Phase:
- N/A
- Study type:
- Interventional
- Mechanism of allocation concealment:
- No Entry
- Blinding:
- No
- Assignment:
- Other
- Sequence generation:
- No Entry
- Who is blinded:
- No Entry
Recruitment
- Recruitment Status:
- Recruiting complete, study complete
- Reason if recruiting stopped or withdrawn:
- No Entry
Recruitment Locations
- Recruitment countries:
-
- Germany
- Number of study centers:
- Monocenter study
- Recruitment location(s):
-
- Other Krankenstation im Grenzdurchgangslager Friedland Göttingen
Recruitment period and number of participants
- Planned study start date:
- 2017-10-02
- Actual study start date:
- 2017-11-01
- Planned study completion date:
- No Entry
- Actual Study Completion Date:
- 2018-12-31
- Target Sample Size:
- 880
- Final Sample Size:
- 2252
Inclusion Criteria
- Sex:
- All
- Minimum Age:
- no minimum age
- Maximum Age:
- no maximum age
- Additional Inclusion Criteria:
- People who use the service of the First Aid Station at the transit border camp Friedland
Exclusion Criteria
Patients who do not understand any of the 13 languages / dialects can only participate in the control group
Addresses
Primary Sponsor
- Address:
- Institut für Allgemeinmedizin Universitätsmedizin GöttingenProf. Dr. Eva Hummers-PradierHumboldtallee 3837073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49 (0) 551 39-22638
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- http://www.allgemeinmedizin.med.uni-goettingen.de
- Investigator Sponsored/Initiated Trial (IST/IIT):
- Yes
Contact for Scientific Queries
- Address:
- Institut für Allgemeinmedizin Universitätsmedizin GöttingenPD Dr. Anne SimmenrothHumboldtallee 3837073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49 (0) 551 39-22647
- Fax:
- +49 (0) 551 39-9530
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- http://www.allgemeinmedizin.med.uni-goettingen.de/
Contact for Public Queries
- Address:
- Institut für Allgemeinmedizin Universitätsmedizin GöttingenGeorg-August-UniversitätDr. Evelyn KleinertHumboldtallee 3837073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49 (0) 551 39-65302
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- http://www.allgemeinmedizin.med.uni-goettingen.de
Principal Investigator
- Address:
- Institut für Allgemeinmedizin Universitätsmedizin GöttingenPD Dr. Anne SimmenrothHumboldtallee 3837073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49 (0) 551 39-22647
- Fax:
- +49 (0) 551 39-9530
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- http://www.allgemeinmedizin.med.uni-goettingen.de/
Other contact for scientific queries
- Address:
- Institut für Allgemeinmedizin Universitätsmedizin GöttingenDr. Evelyn KleinertHumboldtallee 3837073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49 (0) 551 39-65302
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- http://www.allgemeinmedizin.med.uni-goettingen.de
Sources of Monetary or Material Support
Public funding institutions financed by tax money/Government funding body (German Research Foundation (DFG), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), etc.)
- Address:
- Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Soziales, Jugend und FamilieTheaterplatz 437073 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- No Entry
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- No Entry
Public funding institutions financed by tax money/Government funding body (German Research Foundation (DFG), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), etc.)
- Address:
- Europäischer Sozialfonds (ESF)Günther-Wagner-Allee 12-1630177 HannoverGermany
- Telephone:
- No Entry
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- No Entry
Private sponsorship (foundations, study societies, etc.)
- Address:
- Robert-Bosch-Stiftung10062870005 StuttgartGermany
- Telephone:
- No Entry
- Fax:
- No Entry
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- No Entry
Ethics Committee
Address Ethics Committee
- Address:
- Ethikkommission der Universitätsmedizin GöttingenVon-Siebold-Straße 337075 GöttingenGermany
- Telephone:
- +49-551-3961261
- Fax:
- +49-551-3969536
- Contact per E-Mail:
- Contact per E-Mail
- URL:
- No Entry
Vote of leading Ethics Committee
- Vote of leading Ethics Committee
- Date of ethics committee application:
- 2017-02-28
- Ethics committee number:
- 16/3/17
- Vote of the Ethics Committee:
- Approved
- Date of the vote:
- 2017-04-05
Further identification numbers
- Other primary registry ID:
- No Entry
- EudraCT Number:
- No Entry
IPD - Individual Participant Data
- Do you plan to make participant-related data (IPD) available to other researchers in an anonymized form?:
- No Entry
- IPD Sharing Plan:
- No Entry
Study protocol and other study documents
- Study protocols:
- No Entry
- Study abstract:
- No Entry
- Other study documents:
- No Entry
- Background literature:
- No Entry
- Related DRKS studies:
- No Entry
Publication of study results
- Planned publication:
- No Entry
- Publikationen/Studienergebnisse:
- Furaijat G, Kleinert E, Simmenroth A, Müller F. Implementing a digital communication assistance tool to collect the medical history of refugee patients: DICTUM Friedland - an action-oriented mixed methods study protocol. BMC Health Serv Res 219; 19:103.
- Kleinert E, Müller F, Kruse S, Furaijat G, Simmenroth A. Nutzbarkeit digitaler Anamnesehilfen für nicht-deutschsprachige Patienten in der allgemeinmedizinischen Sprechstunde. Gesundheitswesen 2020 [online ahead of print].
- Kleinert E, Müller F, Furaijat G, Hillermann N, Jablonka A, Happle C, Simmenroth A Does refugee status matter? Medical needs of newly arrived asylum seekers and resettlement refugees- a retrospective observational study of diagnoses in a primary care setting. Confl Health 2019; 13:39.
- Date of first publication of study results:
- No Entry
- DRKS entry published for the first time with results:
- No Entry
Basic reporting
- Basic Reporting / Results tables:
- No Entry
- Brief summary of results:
- No Entry