The paradox of project success despite lack of the “My Pathway” telehealth platform usage

The article investigates the paradoxical success of a Danish telehealth project introducing the “My Pathway” platform to reduce the length of patient stays while maintaining patient satisfaction. These goals were achieved in the project, which was considered successful despite the lack of actual platform usage. Based on a qualitative, longitudinal case study we investigate this paradox by showing how barriers and facilitators have influenced telehealth adoption and use in the post-implementation process, affecting the overall success of the project. The study makes two contributions. First, it describes dynamics of adoption barriers, that is, that barriers are interrelated and influence adoption to varying degrees over time. Adoption barriers resulted in the telehealth platform not being used and it consequently only influenced the actual project success and goal achievement indirectly. Second, it highlights information management as a critical facilitator in telehealth adoption and use. Information management facilitated achievement of project goals despite the lack of actual use of “My Pathway,” which explains the paradoxical project success. Based on these interpretations, we point to information management as a critical facilitator of the success of telehealth initiatives and provide recommendations for research and practice.