JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

There are various complex reasons that influence sustainable adoption of innovations in healthcare systems. Low adoption can be caused by a lack of support from one or more stakeholders and their needs and expectations are not always considered or aligned.

Objective:

To identify stakeholders’ perceptions on barriers and facilitators towards the sustainable adoption of digital health innovations.

Methods:

A stakeholder workshop was attended by twelve participants with a range of backgrounds on 25th August 2017, including people representing the views from patients, carers, local hospitals, pharmacy retailers, health insurers, health services researchers, engineers, and technology and pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland. Based on adoption of innovation frameworks, we asked participants to interview each other about three factors influencing the adoption of digitally-delivered health interventions: 1) facilitators and barriers in the external system; 2) needs and expectations of stakeholders; and 3) safety, quality, and usability of innovations. The worksheets and videos generated from the workshop were qualitatively analyzed and summarized.

Results:

Facilitators for adoption mentioned were high levels of income and education, and digital health being a high priority to stakeholders. Main common interests of different stakeholders were patient satisfaction and job protection. Healthcare spending was a misaligned interest; whilst some stakeholders were keen on spending more to obtain or provide the highest quality of care, others were focused on reducing healthcare spending to provide cost-effective services. Switzerland’s diversity and complexity in terms of the organisation with 26 cantons (administrative divisions) were barriers as this made it harder to ensure interoperability of interventions. A culture of innovation was considered a push factor, but adoption was inhibited by persistent paper-based systems, a fear of change, and unwillingness to share data. The sustainability of interventions can be promoted by making them patient-centered, meaning that patients should be involved throughout their development.

Conclusions:

Promoting sustainable adoption of digital health remains challenging despite various push factors being in place. Barriers related to fragmentation, patient-centeredness, data security, privacy, trust, and job security need to be addressed. A strength is that people from a wide range of backgrounds attended the workshop. A limitation is that the findings are focused on the macro level. In-depth case studies of specific issues need to be conducted in different settings. Clinical Trial: NA