Introduction/Background Robot-assisted visits, as part of telemedicine, can offer doctors the opportunity to take care of patients. Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic there has been an increase of telemedicine. The use of teleconsultations for example have found their way into the German health care system. However, the practicability and the benefit of robot- assisted postoperative visits have not been systematically investigated in any study worldwide.

Methodology Patients were enrolled in a prospective randomized study comparing the standard postoperative visit with the doctor on call and the digital visit through the Double robot between December 2019 and April 2022. All patients and doctors completed a survey after the visit. The primary outcome was the patient satisfaction. Secondary outcomes included patients’ pain, hospitalization time and patients’ opinion about the usefulness of the robot. Likert scales of arithmetic mean, standard deviation and subgroup analyses with the Mann-Whitney-U test and the exact Fisher test were used to compare outcomes.

Results We enrolled a total of 106 patients, 54 (50,9%) of them underwent the robot visit and 52 (49,1%) underwent the conventional visit. Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics were similar between groups. Our primary outcome was the same in both arms. Similar results were obtained for the secondary endpoints.

Conclusion Robot-televisits were comparable to standard visit including satisfaction, usefulness and time of hospitalisation. Digitalization in medicine is an irreversible process, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. We hope that our study will provide concrete help to encourage the allocation of funds for telemedicine in Germany’s health system.

Disclosures Funding information

Authors state no funding involved.

Robot assisted postopera-ve visit

Conflict of interest statement.

None declared