Three entities determine the success or failure of an organization’s eHealth initiative.
- The patients.
- Healthcare Professionals.
- Healthcare Administration.
The article Factors Determining the Success and Failure of eHealth Interventions: Systematic Review of the Literature is an excellent review of literature of the current state of eHealth with regards to these three stakeholders.
Broadly speaking, the literature suggests patients are principally concerned with personal empowerment and privacy. Providers are concerned with the quality of healthcare and workflow disruption. And administration is mostly concerned with cost, including the policies regarding reimbursement vs. the cost of implementation.
I think this suggests why eHealth hasn’t taken off yet.
Without a common vision of what eHealth is principally meant to do ( empower patients? deliver better care? drive down costs?), it’s going to be very hard to get buy-in from all three stakeholders.
And without by-in, it simply isn’t going to happen.