Adoption of Telehealth by Healthcare Professionals: an Overview of Theoretical Models and their Application

It has long been advocated that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers a huge potential to answer many of the challenges that the healthcare sector is facing. Therefore, information technology applications are abundantly present in healthcare sector. ICT applications promise efficient tools to collect, store, process and communicate health-related data and information. In that respect, it is believed that ICT could improve safety, quality, and costefficiency of healthcare services. For this reason, the integration of ICT into the health system constitutes a priority for many countries given regional disparities in the availability of health care services and in the distribution of health care human resources. However, telehealth adoption by healthcare professionals still represents a challenge. Indeed, the recognition of the utility of telemedicine by managers will not justify its adoption by physicians if they are reluctant to its use. In that sense, physicians’ lack of acceptance of the technology represents one of the main reasons why telemedicine implementation projects have failed. This paper presents an overview of the theoretical models that have been applied to the study of ICT adoption in the specific sector of healthcare, presents a synthesis of actual knowledge on factors involved in ICT adoption among healthcare professionals, and identifies key elements to design strategies aimed at optimizing the use of telehealth in healthcare settings.