JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In remote areas, Connected Health (CH) is needed, but as local resources are often scarce and the purchasing power of residents is usually poor, it is a challenge to apply CH there. Stakeholder analysis is employed to facilitate strategy formation, as it can generate knowledge about how the characteristics of stakeholders influence decision-making processes and what relevant actors’ behaviour, intentions, and interrelations are.

Objective:

The objective of this study is to explore who the CH stakeholders are in remote areas of Taiwan and what their interests and power are in order to determine ideal strategies for applying CH by exploring the respective unknowns and discovering insights for those facing similar issues.

Methods:

Qualitative research is conducted to research and interpret the phenomena of ageing population in remote settings. An exploratory approach was employed involving semi-structured interviews with 22 participants from eight remote allied case studies. The interviews explored perspectives on stakeholder arrangements, including the power and interests of stakeholders and the needs of all the parties in the ecosystem.

Results:

Results are obtained from in-depth interviews and focus groups include identify who the stakeholders of remote health are and how they influence its practice, as well as how associated agreements bring competitive advantages. Stakeholders cover government sectors, industrial players, academic researchers, users, and their associates, who described their perspectives on their power and interests in remote health service delivery. Specific facilitators and barriers to effective delivery were identified. A number of themes, such as government’s interests and power of decision making were corroborated across rural and remote services. These have been broadly grouped into the disclosure of conflicts of interest, asymmetry in decision making, and data development for risk assessment.

Conclusions:

This study contributes to current knowledge by exploring the features of CH in remote areas and investigating its implementation from the perspectives of stakeholder management. It offers insights into managing remote health through the CH platform, which can be used for premilitary study in quantitative research. Consequently, these findings could help facilitate diverse stakeholder engagement for health information sharing and social interaction more effectively.