Drivers for Teleconsultation Acceptance in Brazil: Patients’ Perspective during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Telehealth services for global emergencies: implications for COVID-19: a scoping review based on current evidence

INTRODUCTION

The availability of low-cost computing and digital telecommunication in the 1980s made telehealth practicable. Telehealth has the capacity to improve healthcare access and outcomes for patients while reducing healthcare costs across a wide range of health conditions and situations.

OBJECTIVE

This study compares the adoption, advantages, and challenges of telehealth services between high-income (HICs) and low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. The key search terms were: "Telehealth", "Telehealth in HICs", "Telehealth in LMICs", "Telehealth before COVID-19", "Telehealth during COVID-19". We searched exhaustively ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, CINAHL, and EMBASE databases from 2012. Booleans OR/AND were combined with key search terms to increase relevant search results. The literature search and selection process followed the Sample, Phenomena of Interest, Design, Evaluation, and Research (SPIDER) question format.

RESULTS

The adoption of telehealth before COVID-19 was generally low in both HICs and LMICs. The impact of COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of telehealth at the facility level but not nationwide in both high-income countries and LMICs. The rapid adoption of telehealth at the facility level in both high-income and LMICs introduced several challenges that are unique to each country and need to be addressed.

CONCLUSION

The lack of national policies and regulations is making the adoption of telehealth at the national level challenging in both high and low-middle-income countries. Governments and Stakeholders of healthcare must consider telehealth as a healthcare procedure that should be deployed in clinical working procedures. Primary quantitative and qualitative studies must be conducted to address challenges encountered during the pilot implementation of telehealth services in both high-income countries and LMICs before and during pandemics.

Determinants of Telehealth Continuance Intention: A Multi-Perspective Framework

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries’ physicians in the world have used telehealth to visit patients via telehealth. The study aimed to integrate the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the technology acceptance model (TAM), and self-determination theory (SDT) to explore the adoption behavior of a telehealth system. A convenient sample of residents was drawn from the population of Nantou County in Taiwan and analyzed via structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that attitude, perceived behavioral control, perceived usefulness, and perceived autonomy support jointly have significantly positive effects on continuance intention. Results also confirmed that perceived autonomy support, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness jointly have significantly positive effects on attitude. Furthermore, this study also showed that a crucial mediators’ role is played by perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and attitude. The conclusions and practical implications of the research will hopefully provide health organizations and institutions with some innovative insights and foresights, which in turn will promote better practices and services of telehealth technology.