Examining health care providers' participation in telemedicine system design and implementation

The study objective was to determine whether the extent of health care providers' participation in the design, development and implementation of a telemedicine system impacts their overall satisfaction with this system, their perception of patients' satisfaction and the frequency of system usage. Questionnaires were mailed to 156 telemedicine providers and 68 questionnaires were returned. User participation in system implementation was strongly correlated to health care providers' satisfaction with the telemedicine system (r=0.68, p<0.001) and the perceived patients' satisfaction with the system (r=0.72, p<0.001). The findings suggest that even if end-users cannot be included in the definition and physical design of the system, their active inclusion in the implementation stage can still lead to high levels of satisfaction and system usage.