Investigating Barriers for the Implementation of Telemedicine Initiatives: A Systematic Review of Reviews

Telemedicine is said to change the way care is delivered. Nevertheless, it still faces barriers to overcome the pilot stage and reach a majority of patients in regular care. Although research widely exists on telemedicine barriers in isolated settings, a systematic overview to summarize key scientific contributions is missing. This paper aims to close this gap with a systematic review of already existing reviews. In sum, 98 barriers for telemedicine implementation were found and categorized depending on the factors triggering the barriers. These factors include patient, healthcare provider, culture and disease (people-related); health sector, standards/guidelines, legal framework, finance, organization and methodology (process-related); and technology (object-related). Recommendations for researchers and practitioners were drawn to overcome the barriers identified