Deploying Actor -Network Theory to Analyse Telemedicine Implementation in Ghana

Abstract

This paper presents the pan African eNetwork for Telemedicine and Tele-education programme being run at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Ghana. The study sought to understand eHealth implementation in low resource settings through the lens of actor-network theory. This theory is based on the sociology of translations, and was employed as a framework for exploring the pan African Telemedicine programme. Data collection was done between October, 2011 and June 2012, through triangulation of qualitative methods: interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. A total of 30 human and non-human actors' were identified and semi-structured face-to-face interviews conducted with the human actors. Translation, the mechanism of progressive temporal social orders, or the transformation from one order to another through changes in the alignment of interest in a heterogeneous network (Sarker, Sarker and Sidorova, 2006), has not been effective and thus implementation of the eNetwork has not been successful. Future studies should focus on staff acceptance of the eNetwork.