Non-use of telemedicine: A scoping review

Many telemedicine interventions fail to be implemented in medical care with non-use and discontinued use by patients being among the major reasons. The aim of this scoping review was to provide an overview of barriers associated with non-use and discontinued use of telemedicine. An electronic search was conducted in Pubmed in October 2019 and updated in November 2020, followed by a hand search in the beginning of 2021. All potential articles were screened by two independent reviewers based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. A qualitative content analysis according to Mayring was carried out. The topics ‘intervention’, ‘context of use’ and ‘user’ were chosen as overarching themes. Out of 1377 potentially relevant articles, 73 were included. User-related barriers were mentioned in most of the analysed studies, followed by barriers related to the intervention. The analysis provides the basis for overcoming non-use issues in telemedicine.