Managerial Requirements for Providing Telemedicine Services to the Elderly: A Review Study

The advantages of telemedicine for the elderly are well known, but there are scattered studies on how to better prepare, implement, and evaluate it for older people in the world. It seems necessary to conduct a study to identify the managerial requirements for providing telemedicine to older people. Therefore, the present study aims to review the managerial requirements for providing telemedicine services to the elderly.

This review study was conducted based on the 5-step approach of Arksey & O’Malley. Related studies were identified by searching in three databases of Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed as well as searching for gray literature in Google Scholar. This search was limited to articles published from 2010 to 2022. Inclusion criteria were the study of the managerial requirements of telemedicine in three stages of preparation, implementation and evaluation, publishing from 2010 to 2022, written in English or Persian language or having English abstracts with sufficient evidence for extraction, and availability of full texts. There were no restrictions regarding the country of study. The studies with no access to their full texts were excluded. 

In total, 209 primary concepts, 55 unique concepts, 21 primary themes and 7 main themes regarding the preparation, implementation and evaluation stages were extracted. Out of 38 reviewed studies, 34 were related to the preparation stage, 32 related to the implementation stage, and 13 related to the evaluation stage. The need for organizing resources and manpower in the preparation stage, the need for monitoring, preservation and maintenance in the implementation stage, and the need for evaluation of long-term outcome and scalability of technology in the evaluation stage had the highest level of importance compared to other requirements.

The number of studies on managerial requirements of telemedicine in the implementation and evaluation stages is lower than the studies on the requirements in the preparation stage. It is necessary to identify these requirements in all stages. This study provides valuable information about managerial requirements for providing telemedicine services to the elderly, which can help managers and policy makers in the health system in promoting the quality and accessibility of telemedicine services for older adults.