Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Aug 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 14, 2018 - Oct 9, 2018
Date Accepted: Sep 4, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A Model for Assessing Clinicians’ Readiness to Adopt mHealth into Rural Patient Care
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health (mHealth) technology dissemination has penetrated rural and urban areas alike. Yet, healthcare organization oversight and clinician adoption have not kept pace with patient use. mHealth could have a unique impact on health and quality of life for rural populations.
Objective:
This study explored organizational readiness for rural mHealth adoption, the use of patient-reported data by clinical care teams, and potential impact on improving rural healthcare delivery.
Methods:
: Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were used to investigate clinicians’ current practices, motivators, and perceived barriers to their use of mHealth technologies in rural settings.
Results:
Thirteen clinicians were interviewed, and 53.8% reported encouraging use of mHealth apps or wearable devices with rural patients. Perceived barriers to adoption were categorized into three primary pillars: 1) personal (clinician), 2) patient, and 3) organizational. Organizational was most prominent, with sub-codes of time, uniformity, and policy/direction. Thematic analysis revealed code-category linkages that identify the complex nature of a rural healthcare organization’s current climate from a clinician perspective. A thematic map was developed to visualize the flow from category to code. Identified linkages guided the development of a refined rural mHealth readiness model.
Conclusions:
Clinicians (physicians included) have limited time for continuing education, research, or exploration of emerging technologies. If organizations were prepared to manage mHealth, it is likely clinicians could improve the quality of care for their patients, both rural and urban. However, many organizations are not yet prepared to prescribe or prohibit third-party mHealth technologies. Clinicians are motivated to learn more, but they need guidance through organization-led directives. Rural healthcare institutions should invest in mHealth analysis, tool development, and formal recommendations of sanctioned tools for clinicians to use with patients.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.