Abstract
Background: According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via communications to improve a patient’s health’. Despite the documented advantages of telemedicine, especially in developing countries, the implementation of this technology has been slow, with most projects not succeeding past the pilot phase.Objectives: The aim of the article is to provide critical success factors (CSF) that will enable the deployment of telemedicine in the cloud in order to improve health care services in developing countries.Methods: A thorough literature review was performed of peer reviewed articles in order to identify possible barriers for telemedicine to be deployed in the cloud. Furthermore, the Technology Organization Environmental Model was used in order to group the barriers according to the various factors and, from this process, critical success factors were formulated for consideration.Conclusion: Five critical success factors were formulated in order to implement telemedicine making use of the cloud in developing countries. These include having a national integrated plan for telemedicine; promoting best practices within a legislation framework; involving the end user; providing education to improve levels of telemedicine awareness amongst staff and patients, and addressing technological issues.
Highlights
The average doctor to patient ratio in South Africa is estimated to be 1:1300, whilst in some rural areas this ratio can reach up to 1:100 000 (IRIN 2008; Jacobs 2007)
The accessibility and quality of health care services in rural and urban areas can be improved by making use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
Health care workers in the rural areas benefit from telemedicine as they receive support and education from their urban colleagues (WHO 2011; Wootton et al 2009)
Summary
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via communications to improve a patient’s health’. Despite the documented advantages of telemedicine, especially in developing countries, the implementation of this technology has been slow, with most projects not succeeding past the pilot phase
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