Almathami HKY, Win KT, Vlahu-Gjorgievska E, et al.
Journal of medical Internet research. Date of publication 2020 Feb 20;volume 22(2):e16407.
1. J Med Internet Res. 2020 Feb 20;22(2):e16407. doi: 10.2196/16407.
Barriers and Facilitators That Influence Telemedicine-Based, Real-Time, Online
Consultation at Patients' Homes: Systematic Literature Review.
Almathami HKY(#)(1)(2), Win KT(1), Vlahu-Gjorgievska E(1).
Author information:
(1)Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong,
Wollongong, Australia.
(2)College of Computers and Information Systems, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah,
Saudi Arabia.
(#)Contributed equally
BACKGROUND: Health care providers are adopting information and communication
technologies (ICTs) to enhance their services. Telemedicine is one of the
services that rely heavily on ICTs to enable remote patients to communicate with
health care professionals; in this case, the patient communicates with the health
care professional for a follow-up or for a consultation about his or her health
condition. This communication process is referred to as an e-consultation. In
this paper, telemedicine services refer to health care services that use ICTs,
which enable patients to share, transfer, and communicate data or information in
real time (ie, synchronous) from their home with a care provider-normally a
physician-at a clinical site. However, the use of e-consultation services can be
positively or negatively influenced by external or internal factors. External
factors refer to the environment surrounding the system as well as the system
itself, while internal factors refer to user behavior and motivation.
OBJECTIVE: This review aims to investigate the barriers and the facilitators that
influence the use of home consultation systems in the health care context. This
review also aims to identify the effectiveness of Home Online Health Consultation
(HOHC) systems in improving patients' health as well as their satisfaction with
the systems.
METHODS: We conducted a systematic literature review to search for
articles-empirical studies-about online health consultation in four digital
libraries: Scopus, Association for Computing Machinery, PubMed, and Web of
Science. The database search yielded 2518 articles; after applying the inclusion
and exclusion criteria, the number of included articles for the final review was
45. A qualitative content analysis was performed to identify barriers and
facilitators to HOHC systems, their effectiveness, and patients' satisfaction
with them.
RESULTS: The systematic literature review identified several external and
internal facilitators and barriers to HOHC systems that were used in the creation
of a HOHC framework. The framework consists of four requirements; the framework
also consists of 17 facilitators and eight barriers, which were further
categorized as internal and external influencers on HOHC.
CONCLUSIONS: Patients from different age groups and with different health
conditions benefited from remote health services. HOHC via video conferencing was
effective in delivering online treatment and was well-accepted by patients, as it
simulated in-person, face-to-face consultation. Acceptance by patients increased
as a result of online consultation facilitators that promoted effective and
convenient remote treatment. However, some patients preferred face-to-face
consultation and showed resistance to online consultation. Resistance to online
consultation was influenced by some of the identified barriers. Overall, the
framework identified the facilitators and barriers that positively and negatively
influenced the uptake of HOHC systems, respectively.
©Hassan Khader Y Almathami, Khin Than Win, Elena Vlahu-Gjorgievska. Originally
published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org),
20.02.2020.
DOI: 10.2196/16407
PMCID: PMC7059083
PMID: 32130131 [Indexed for MEDLINE]
