Sun-gil Yoo, Dongik Oh, Sedong Min, Wonhan Shin, Journal of Internet Computing and Services, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 13-24, Aug. 2015
10.7472/jksii.2015.16.4.13, Full Text:
Keywords: Telemedicine, Innovation diffusion theory, Survey

Abstract

In order to reduce public medical expenses as well as to provide effective medical services, telemedicine between doctors and patients is considered as an alternative to the conventional hospital visit. But the medical community has been protesting the introduction of telemedicine for the efficacy and safety reasons. Korean government has been conducting a number of pilot projects to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of telemedicine for more than 10 years. However, still the system is not yet legalized. In this study, we have conducted a telemedicine pilot project in Cambodia for one year, where telemedicine can be more freely exercised. After the project, we conducted a survey based on the 'Rogers diffusion' theory. Survey results show that both physicians and patients are positive about the relative advantage of the telemedicine. However, the complexity and high cost of the equipment used in telemedicine has been found to be a possible obstacle. In addition, we found that there is no problem for providing telemedicine services under challenged environment, such as in Cambodia.

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