Prospects of telemedicine in developing countries. Case study: Greece

Abstract

This pilot research examines the motives, the obstacles and the expected outcomes of telemedicine from a medical practitioner's viewpoint. It is a qualitative study based on interviews of 60 practitioners, all from general hospitals of the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, Northern Greece. The study shows that the vast majority of them disagree with the motives provided for the promotion of telemedicine practices in their health units, they differ from the IT experts' opinion of what the obstacles are leading to the low diffusion of telemedicine and show very low expectations of the benefits yield by its application. The main conclusion is that more work is needed to communicate the positive points of medicine especially to the people mostly related and to be involved with this practice.