A Narrative Review on Telehealth Services Adoption in Rural Areas and Related Barriers to Telehealth in India - Technological, Regional, Cultural, and Linguistics

With the use of Telehealth, specialty services can be conceivably doable for rural healthcare facilities rather than staffing with specialty and subspecialty providers. Telehealth allows specialists and subspecialists to visit rural cases, perfecting access as well as providing a wider range of healthcare services available to rural communities via telemedicine for various specialties. The primary objective of this paper is to understand telemedicine services and the challenges in implementing the same in rural areas of India. Databases like PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, and Google Scholar were used for document searches. Further analysis of the selected studies was done on the basis of study design sample size, methodology, and outcomes. From the document search, 987 articles were found and 18 were selected. Out of the studies selected 11 articles were conducted in rural areas and 7 articles were regarding technological advancement in telehealth. Providers and public health units can use telehealth, tele pharmacy, and RPM services to communicate with patients and citizens in their homes and provide them with the benefits. Factors hindering the growth of telemedicine are privacy concerns, reluctance towards adoption of advances in technology, unavailability of technological infrastructure, bandwidth issues, cost-effectiveness, legal concerns, etc. Study results show that to ensure high-quality healthcare across the country, healthcare professionals should prioritize addressing the telehealth challenges.