Feasibility study of the telemedicine systems deployment in rehabilitation centers for addiction therapy
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Health Policy, Public Health, Science and Medical Education, Human-Computer Interaction, Computational Science
- Keywords
- Feasibility Study, Implementation, Rehabilitation centers, Telemedicine, Addiction Therapy., Health systems
- Copyright
- © 2018 Sadeghzadeh
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Feasibility study of the telemedicine systems deployment in rehabilitation centers for addiction therapy. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27449v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27449v1
Abstract
Objective: This study aim was to determine the feasibility to establish a telemedicine system in one of the rehabilitation and addiction treatment centers in Tehran.
Materials and Methods: This study was descriptive-cross sectional. The research population consisted of 28 people, who were the head and Senior Executive Manager, financial director, IT manager, physicians, nurses and counselors of the addiction center. Due to the small number of statistical population, a total number of sampling was performed. The field research tool was interview, observation and standard questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was assessed by professors and experts and its reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.87). SPSS software was used to analyze the data.
Results: Our studied center, has the sufficient technical infrastructures needed to implement Telemedicine, and the IT department has a good level of awareness about telemedicine technology. The center does not have any strategic plan that includes telemedicine, and the manager board does not support telemedicine, but the center has the support of the chief executive manager on this matter. The shortage of technical staff, insurance and reimbursement problems, initial costs and medical staff shortages, current costs, and training and medical staff resistance are, in the order of priority, the major barriers to telemedicine implementation, and time barriers, employee attitudes, privacy and licensing issues , issues of confidentiality and competition are less important.
Conclusion: Considering that the Rehabilitation and Addict Treatment Center has the technical infrastructures necessary for the implementation of the telemedicine system, as well as the IT department manager is familiar with telemedicine technology, the cost of deploying this system in the center is not significant and is cost-effective. It is recommended to develop an appropriate strategic plan, conduct training programs to change the administrative staff culture and coordinate with the insurer's organizations.
Author Comment
This is my first version of paper and I intended to submit it to a related journal for peer review as soon as possible. But I think the conclusions can be certainly applied by who have enthusiasm to implement telemedicine in their health department.