The essence of telehealth readiness in rural communities: an organizational perspective.

This paper examines telehealth readiness from an organizational perspective and explores the essence of telehealth readiness among four domains, namely, patients, practitioners, the public, and organizations in rural Canadian communities. Because readiness is a necessary requirement for the successful implementation of an innovation, it is important to identify and ensure core factors of readiness before costly investments are made. The findings presented here derive from a qualitative phenomenological research approach involving semistructured telephone interviews with four key informants (respondents).

A readiness model for telehealth is it possible to pre-determine how prepared communities are to implement telehealth?

Telehealth "readiness" can be defined as the degree to which users, health care organizations, and the health system itself are prepared to participate and succeed in its application. This project developed a readiness model for rural/remote locations in Canada. Specifically defined groups or communities with shared characteristics within a rural geographical community (i.

A study of a rural community's readiness for telehealth.

A qualitative approach was used to explore the readiness of a rural community for the implementation of telehealth services. There were four domains of interest: patient, practitioner, public and organization. Sixteen semistructured telephone interviews (three to five in each domain) were carried out with key informants and recorded on audio-tape.