## 2 Materials and Methods  
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This cross-sectional survey was approved by the local Ethics Committee of Sapienza University of Rome (Ref. 5813, Prot. 0520/2020). A telephone survey was administered by a single trained interviewer during April 2020. Participants were selected through probabilistic sampling among patients treated at the MoMax (Oral Medicine and Maxillofacial) ambulatory of the Department of Oral Sciences and Maxillofacial Surgery at \"Sapienza\" University of Rome, Polyclinic Umberto I [9; 10]. This ambulatory is a task force that was founded in June 2014 and designed to provide cancer patients and patients with Oral Potentially Malignant Lesions (OPML) with multidisciplinary team care. The main aim of this project is to customize and accelerate the treatment plan for cancer patients as a trial to improve their survival rate. Different health providers work together in this project, including oral medicine specialists, prosthodontists, maxillofacial surgeons, oncologists, radiotherapists, and anatomopathologists. The sample size was calculated using EpiCalc 2000 version 1.02 (Microsoft Windows application) by setting the following parameters:  
* Expected answer \"Yes\" to Question 22 (Would you be interested in using an oral telemedicine service?) = 65%;
* Null hypothesis value = 50%;
* Significance = 0.05;
* Power = 80%. The sample size obtained was 84 patients. The selection of the participants was achieved by generating random numbers using EpiCalc 2000 version 1.02; each generated number was then connected to a specific patient in our department database. Only patients aged > 18 years old were included. Patients that met the following criteria were excluded from the study: patients aged > 75 years old, patients who did not answer telephone calls after three tries, patients who did not give consent, patients with language difficulties, and patients with mental disabilities. Each participant was informed about the study, including the following information: interview duration (mean duration: 20 min), aim of the survey, guarantee of participant anonymity, and the option to withdraw from the study. Before the administration of the questionnaire, each participant was required to agree to the consent and privacy policy through audio registration as proof of voluntary participation in the study. The personal data for each patient were anonymized through the assignment of a generic number, and only the researchers were able to identify the patient. The questionnaire was developed by a panel of four experienced oral pathologists and one biostatician after reviewing the relevant published literature and the most recent available information on telemedicine, teledentistry, and tele(oral)medicine. The survey consisted of 24 multiple-choice questions divided into four different domains: sociodemographic variables (gender, age, civil status, city of residence, occupation, etc. ); factors that may influence the patient's experience within the MoMax ambulatory (annual mean access to our ambulatory, waiting time before the visit, etc. ); skills in the use of technology (ability to use information technology (IT) devices, ability to use smartphone cameras, etc. ); and interest in tele(oral)medicine services. The answers were encoded and entered into an Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Office 2016, Redmond, WA, USA). Statistical analysis was performed in collaboration with the Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases of the Polyclinic Umberto I, Sapienza University of Rome, using SPSS software version 25.0. Descriptive analysis was reported as frequencies and percentages.