dc.description.abstract | Telemedicine is one of the technologies that use the knowledge of Information
Communication Technologies (ICTs) to curb geographical barriers while increasing
access to healthcare services. This study aimed at design an adoption framework for
telemedicine care in Kenya. This study was done in health facilities in Nandi County.
The specific objectives of the study were: To examine healthcare needs for telemedicine
care in Nandi County -Kenya; to analyze the readiness use status for telemedicine care
adoption and to design a suitable telemedicine care adoption framework. Though
telemedicine care is in existence, the researcher felt that an adoption framework should
be considered to guide in its implementation. This study was conducted using cross sectional survey design in which study sample of 4 doctors, 59 nurses, 12 clinical
officers, 1 pharmacist and 4 pharmaceutical technologists, making it a sample size of
80 from target population of 100 healthcare workers working at the County hospital,
two sub county hospitals and 2 health centers. Structured questionnaire was used to
collect the data. Pretesting for the instruments was done to ascertain face and content
validities. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS software version 20. Analyzed
results were presented using table, pie-chart and bar graphs. From the findings it was
evident that the most critical health care need in Nandi County is direct patient services
(82.5 %) followed by special referral services and Tele-pharmacy which were rated at
77.5 % and 54.5 % respectively. While, the least critical healthcare need areas were
medical education and mentoring (53.8%), Tele-nursing (51.3%), remote patient
monitoring (45%), Tele-radiology 20%.In view of readiness for Tele-medicine, most
of the respondents (46.3%) cited that other technologies started recently in Nandi
County in solving healthcare problems. It was further noted that, 50% of the
respondents observed that it takes up-to 10 minutes to attend to patients using
telemedicine in the County Referral hospital as compared to 18.8% of the respondents
who observe that it takes up-to 10 minutes to attend to patients without using
telemedicine. These findings were used to design a Telemedicine framework to enhance
improved service delivery. The framework designed has illustrated that direct patient
services is popular with health workers interviewed at 82.5% and the least Tele radiology at 20%.The health workers can comfortably use telemedicine service. From
the research findings; it was noted that stakeholder involvement, human resources
capacity building and increased funding can play an important role during adoption.
Lastly, the findings has clearly demonstrated that; direct patient services, specialist
referral services, and Tele Pharmacy need to be considered for acceleration of
telemedicine care. | en_US |