Telemedicine and health service delivery in Uganda

Abstract

Telemedicine is increasingly being promoted as an ICT based approach to provide healthcare services, to leverage digital technology given the increasing need for healthcare delivery amidst health workforce shortages globally. There is however limited empirical evidence on how telemedicine has improved access to healthcare in low-income countries. The main objective of this study was to examine the role of telemedicine in improving health service delivery in Uganda. This study was a cross-sectional design employing both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. The study was carried out at Mulago National Referral Hospital, Kiswa Health centre III and Rocket health Uganda. The study target population was all health workers at Mulago hospital, Kiswa health centre III and clients at Rocket health Uganda. Purposive sampling was used since the field of telemedicine is still in its infancy and not many people appreciate or fully understand it, the investigator selected study participants according to their willingness to participate in the study. The study data was analyzed using STATA version 15.0. According to the study results, majority of the respondents that took part of the study said that there is no available ICT infrastructure that enables the utilization of telemedicine services among health workers (90%). Study results further showed that the major barrier to the utilization of telemedicine services among health workers limited is limited government support (51%). Other barriers include; limited resources (13%), no policy or law to support telemedicine (17%), lack of ICT infrastructure (8%), lack of training (7%), limited private sector support (3%) and resistance from staff (1%). Additionally, study results also revealed that majority of the respondents that took part of this study take between 10-30 minutes to receive a service using telemedicine (50%). Study results from table 4.11 reveal that majority of the respondents that took part of this study said that the cost involved to get a medical service using telemedicine has been moderate (55%). Last but not least, the logistic regression results showed a statistically significant positive relationship at 5 percent level of significance between the age of the health worker, education level of health worker, knowledge on telemedicine, availability of policy to support telemedicine and sustainable use of telemedicine in this study since its P-value is less than 0.05. The study thus recommends that the government should support public health facilities with required resources, in particular ICT equipment and subsidized mobile data in-order to promote the sustainable use of telemedicine. Furthermore, the government of Uganda through parliament should establish policies or laws that will promote the use of telemedicine in both public and private health facilities.