Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 14, numbers 1 and 2, 2022 // View article

The Stakeholders’ Views on the Growth of Telemedicine Use

Authors:
Nermin Elokla
Tomohiko Moriyama
Naoki Nakashima

Keywords: Telemedicine; Service Development; Stakeholders, Views and Needs

Abstract:
The views and experiences of the stakeholders on the use of telemedicine play an important role in the development of the service. This study aims to investigate the willingness of Japanese people to use the telemedicine service, and identify cases/situations it is preferred to use for. It also identifies the stakeholders’ opinions and needs to increase actual use of telemedicine. To achieve our goals, two different types of stakeholders were selected, including general public and medical doctors. Regarding the first group that includes ordinary people, 84 participants in the age ranging from 20 to 64 years were randomly selected, and data were collected from them using a questionnaire. As for the second group of participants, online interviews were conducted with 25 physicians (with ages ranging from 30 to 65 year) working in different scopes of medicine. The results of both surveys reveal that all participants except three doctors had never experienced telemedicine despite COVID-19 state of emergency. Less than half of the participants in each group expressed their willingness to use telemedicine at present. Furthermore, the majority of our participants pointed out that telemedicine is a good tool for virtual visits to inpatients by their loved ones. Based on the stakeholders’ views and needs, this study identifies two approaches to increase telemedicine utilization. First approach aims to expand the scope of telemedicine, so that encompasses various issues, which currently concern the community in Japan. The second one focuses on improving the telemedicine platform through different actions recommended by each group of participants.

Pages: 32 to 41

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2022. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2022

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2660