Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Mar 21, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 9, 2025
Socio-technical adaptation of telerehabilitation in rehabilitation practice: A survey amongst rehabilitation professionals
ABSTRACT
Background:
Both rehabilitation practice and rehabilitation professionals' work have been transformed by the adoption of different technological solutions. Socio-technical theory can be used to analyse the adoption of technologies in rehabilitation practice.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to enhance the understanding of the socio-technical perspective of telerehabilitation (TR) in rehabilitation practice and to illustrate how accurately the FITT (Fit between Individuals, Task, and Technology) and FITTE (Fit Between Individuals, Tasks, Technology, and Environment) frameworks elucidate the technological and non-technological factors influencing the adoption of TR.
Methods:
A survey amongst rehabilitation professionals (N=629) was conducted in a Finnish outpatient rehabilitation setting. Five open-ended questions were analysed using inductive, deductive, and abductive qualitative content analysis.
Results:
In TR, professionals’ practice depends on both social and technical components. Our findings suggest that certain dimensions of the FITTE framework need to be specified in order to better understand the socio-technical adaptation of TR.
Conclusions:
We propose an extension to create the FITTIO (Fit between Individual, Task, Technology, Interactive Socio-Technical Environment, and Organisational and Sociopolitical Context) framework, which provides conceptual tools for making contextual interpretations of the adoption of TR in rehabilitation settings. This study increases the understanding of the socio-technical nature of TR, which can be used in the adoption of technological solutions in rehabilitation practice.
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Copyright
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