Prospects for telemedicine adoption: Prognostic modeling as exemplified by rural areas of USA

Abstract

Experts predict that in the majority of countries state healthcare expenditures will continue to rise. Usage of telemedicine applications - the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in order to provide clinical health care at a distance - will help optimize the costs of healthcare in the long-term. The main advantages of telemedicine include reducing the number of doctor's errors, saving both patients and physicians time, and improving the efficiency of healthcare organizations. It also ensures timely and high quality services for large segments of the population living in remote territories with difficult socio-economic conditions, particularly rural areas. The paper forecasts the adoption rate of telemedicine in US rural areas by using the Bass Model. The model is considered quite versatile as it can be used across a wide range of products and services. Nevertheless, the Bass model has some limitations related to how it estimates missing data. Calculation errors can be related to numerous barriers, which affect the adoption rate of telemedicine. These barriers include: high costs of production and exploitation of hi-tech equipment; physicians insufficiently prepared to adopt and use the latest technologies in their daily work; as well as possible concerns of patients about the quality of remote healthcare service.