eHealth Implementation Issues in Low-Resource Countries: Model, Survey, and Analysis of User Experience

Abstract

eHealth success factors can be categorized into 5 groups; our study focused on frontline eHealth workers' opinions concerning 2 of these groups: technology and its support infrastructure and user acceptance. We found significant disparities among the responses from different participant groups. Privately funded organizations tended to be further ahead with eHealth utilization than those that were publicly funded. Moreover, participant comments identified the need for more use of telemedicine in remote and rural regions in these countries. An understanding of these differences can help regions or countries that are lagging in the implementation and use of eHealth technologies. Our approach could also be applied to detailed studies of the other 3 categories of success factors: short- and long-term funding, organizational factors, and political or legislative aspects.