Toward a Better Understanding of the Assimilation of Telehealth Systems

A number of healthcare authorities are considering bringing telehealth systems out of experimental settings into mainstream clinical care. As most literature on telehealth systems to date has focused on their adoption and their evaluation, more work is warranted to understand how telehealth systems can be assimilated and to identify factors that may facilitate or impinge onto this assimilation. Borrowing from institutional, structuration and organizational learning theories, we propose a conceptual model of the determinants relevant for the assimilation of telehealth systems in healthcare organizations. The result is summarized in eight conjectures and a conceptual model. This work not only goes beyond the common methods of analyzing and discussing telehealth systems with user acceptance models, but it also draws a strong link between the assimilation of technological innovations and their institutional context. We hope it will contribute to guide research and managerial actions directed toward integrating telehealth systems in the workplace.