A Framework For Barriers Of Telemedicine Implementation In Iran

Table 4 shows the fitting indices in this level. Indices are approximately in the suitable level so the fitness of the model is confirmed.

In this framework, we introduced 6 barriers for implementing telemedicine and then by using factor analysis, we analyzed these factors and their indices. According to research findings, and according to figure 3, we can see that the barriers of implementing telemedicine with respect to their importance are as below:

Cultural barriers, legal and technical barriers (with the same importance), infrastructure barriers, financial barriers and ethical barriers.

As we mentioned, cultural barriers are the most important barriers in implementing telemedicine. Indices in this barrier, with respect to their importance (according to the loading factors) are as follow: worrying about the quality of services in telemedicine, lack of supportive individuals for spreading telemedicine, preferring traditional medicine by doctors and patients. Some of the doctors believed that implementing this complicated plan in Iran is so difficult and people hardly accept to be visited through telemedicine and doctors also don’t believe much in this way of curing that shows the preference of traditional medicine by doctors and patients. This subject is due to the lack of electronic readiness among Iran’s people and the other reason is that they are worried not to receive the same services as traditional medicine in telemedicine. Mainly, for implementing this plan, it is needed to prepare cultural infrastructures among both patients and doctors. Based on the idea of doctors with whom we consulted, the most important problem in using new technologies in different layers of the society is the inertia. People and systems has used...

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...s of eliminating these barriers. We also recommend to law researchers in law department to do some survey about legal barriers and clarify that how government or health ministry can set special regulations that are well suited to telemedicine. Socialists also can use the category of cultural issues introduced in this research and find the root of these barriers in order to eliminate them.

We had 2 bothering limitations in this research. The first was that Iran is a very large country and for fulfilling the sample, we had to talk to doctors of almost all provinces in Iran or at least all provinces with the same situations. This was so hard and time-consuming. The second was satisfying doctors to answer our questionnaires. Some of them did not have enough time to answer the questions and some refused questionnaires because they disagreed with implementing telemedicine.