The COVID-19 Pandemic and Telemedicine Adoption: Challenges and Opportunities

. The adoption of telemedicine services globally is becoming more intensive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such phenomenon exists also in Indonesia but with less magnitude, it is adopted mostly due to enforcement from the government’s appeal for social distancing. Despite the importance of telemedicines in Indonesia, the challenges of its adoption are inevitable such as regulation and infrastructure readiness. This paper explores some challenges and opportunities of telemedicine adoption in Indonesia during the pandemic. The data from 60 hospitals are collected through e-questionnaire and further analysis is done using statistical tools. The study found that around half of the respondents have adopted the telemedicine where most of them are located in highly populated island and the rest have put short, medium and long term plan to apply it. The hospitals are in favour to keep on extending the adoption of telemedicine despite the challenges in applying it much wider geographical location.