Knowledge, Perception and Readiness to Utilize Telepharmacy Among Malaysian Public

Introduction: Telepharmacy has emerged as a crucial strategy to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 transmission while ensuring access to pharmaceutical care during the pandemic. The assessment of public knowledge and perception is paramount in gauging their readiness to telepharmacy services. Regrettably, there remains a dearth of study concerning the Malaysian public's knowledge, perception, and readiness (KPR) regarding telepharmacy. This study aims to evaluate the KPR of the public in the utilization of telepharmacy and to determine the association between the demographic profile with the KPR of Malaysian public. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using the self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the result by SPSS version 28. The associations between the demographic profile and KPR were analysed by the Kruskal-Wallis’s test. Results: A total of 391 respondents participated and 43.2% were familiar with telepharmacy. The public showed a positive perception and ready to utilize telepharmacy. A significant association was identified between sex and occupation with the knowledge regarding telepharmacy services, meanwhile there are no associations reported between the demographic profile with the perception and readiness. Conclusion: Public in Malaysia has high knowledge, positive perception and high readiness to utilize telepharmacy. Sex and occupation affected the knowledge of the Malaysian public towards telepharmacy. However, there is no significant association between publics’ demographic profiles to the perception and readiness towards the utilization of telepharmacy.