Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: May 25, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: May 24, 2020 - Jul 3, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 17, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Factors impacting clinicians’ adoption of a clinical photo documentation app and its implications for clinical workflows and quality of care - A qualitative case study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health (mHealth) tools have shown promise in clinical photo and wound documentation for their potential to improve workflows, expand access to care, and improve the quality of patient care. However, some barriers to adoption persist.
Objective:
This research focuses on understanding the social, organizational, and technical factors impacting clinicians’ adoption of a clinical photo documentation mobile health app, and its implications for clinical workflows and quality of care.
Methods:
A qualitative case study of a clinical photo and wound documentation app, called imitoCam. The data were collected through 20 in-depth interviews with mHealth providers, clinicians, and medical informatics experts in 8 clinics and hospitals in Switzerland and Germany.
Results:
This case demonstrates that the use of mHealth in clinical photo and wound documentation provides numerous benefits such as time-saving and efficacy, better patient safety and quality of care, enhanced data security and validation, as well as better accessibility. Clinical workflow may also improve when the app is a good fit, resulting in better collaboration and transparency, streamlined daily work, clinician empowerment, and improved quality of care. Findings included important factors that may contribute to or hinder adoption. Factors may be related to the material nature of the tool such as the perceived usefulness, ease of use, interoperability, cost, or security of the app; or social, such as personal experience, attitudes, awareness, or culture. Organizational and policy barriers include the available clinical practice infrastructure, workload and resources, the complexity of the decision making, training, as well as ambiguity or lack of regulations. User engagement in the development and implementation process are vital contributors to the successful adoption of mHealth apps.
Conclusions:
The promising potential of mHealth in clinical photo and wound documentation is clear and may enhance clinical workflow and quality of care, but the factors impacting adoption go beyond the technical features of the tool itself to also embrace significant social and organizational elements. Technology providers, clinicians and decision makers should work together to carefully address any barriers in order to improve adoption and harness the potential of these tools. Clinical Trial: NA
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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.