Digital technology and COVID-19 pandemic: Feasibility and acceptance of an innovative telemedicine platform

The present feasibility study aims at investigating the potential multidimensional advantages, related to an innovative telehealth ecosystem (whose name is T-CUBE), grounding on digital technologies (DTs), designed as a telemonitoring, telerehabilitation and telesupporting integrated program. Given robust efficacy and safety results, amply demonstrated for DTs in scientific evidence, the study would explore the economic and organizational sustainability, as well as the healthcare professionals' technology acceptance, that are topics little investigated in the literature stream devoted to telemedicine ecosystems and DTs.To explore the rise of emerging ecosystems in healthcare, T-CUBE was tested within the COVID-19 and chronic diseases settings, compared with the usual care, based on the on-site monitoring, supporting and rehabilitation activities, thus conducting an ex-ante impact assessment.Results demonstrated the sustainability of T-CUBE implementation, within the Lombardy Region setting, with important economic benefits (ranging from -47% to -77%), and an improvement (+51%) in the overall accessibility to care. Healthcare professionals would effectively use the innovative ecosystem to guarantee the taking in charge and the continuity of care of patients. According to the results and given the scalable nature of TCUBE, healthcare providers should be knowledgeable about the telemedicine solutions that could freeing up economic resources to be reinvested in the enlargement of population taken in charge.