Telepsychiatry: assessment of televideo psychiatric interview reliability with present- and next-generation internet infrastructures

Abstract

Objective: We assessed the reliability of remote video psychiatric interviews conducted via the internet using narrow and broad bandwidths. Method: Televideo psychiatric interviews conducted with 42 in‐patients with chronic schizophrenia using two bandwidths (narrow, 128 kilobits/s; broad, 2 megabits/s) were assessed in terms of agreement with face‐to‐face interviews in a test–retest fashion. As a control, agreement was assessed between face‐to‐face interviews. Psychiatric symptoms were rated using the Oxford version of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), and agreement between interviews was estimated as the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: The ICC was significantly lower in the narrow bandwidth than in the broad bandwidth and the control for both positive symptoms score and total score. Conclusion: While reliability of televideo psychiatric interviews is insufficient using the present narrow‐band internet infrastructure, the next generation of infrastructure (broad‐band) may permit reliable diagnostic interviews.