Transcending the Technology of Telemedicine: An Analysis of Telemedicine in North Carolina

Abstract

This study investigated the telemedicine program at East Carolina University School of Medicine. In-depth interviews, organizational texts, and archival records provided data for a case study that sought to understand what telemedicine is to organizational members and how they came to create this contextual reality. The goal of this study was to apply interpretive paradigmatic assumptions in the privileging of telemedicine as the very context of the organization. The findings explain how organizational members make sense of this new way of providing health care. Organizational members' talk revealed that telemedicine is multifaceted: It is access, an economic tool, education, technology, and a grant activity. With the single exception of technology, these themes emerged equally, regardless of whether the telemedicine provider was located at the urban hub site or the rural spoke site. Interestingly, members at both locations talked about critical events in relation to receipt of grant or financial support for new projects. Implications for future research are advanced.

Remote Doctors and Absent Patients: Acting at a Distance in Telemedicine?

“…However, a study by Whitten, Davenport Sypher, and Patterson (2000) explored the organization of telemedicine services in a specific institutional context. Intensive studies of telemedical practice from a sociological perspective are still few and can be found in some science and technology studies research (e.g.…”

An Evolutionary Examination of Telemedicine: A Health and Computer-Mediated Communication Perspective

“…As such, it enables and ensures the delivery of tele-healthcare to specifically benefit medical patients (Turner, 2003; Whitten, Doolittle, & Mackert, 2004; Wootton, 2001). Such communication technologies encompass a variety of advanced, computerized equipment, allowing physicians, nurses, and other similar health professionals to provide complex healthcare thousands of miles away from the location of service (Eysenbach, 2001; Turner, 2003; Whitten, Davenport Sypher, & Patterson, 2000). Besides, not only is telemedicine a system that can be practiced in a diversity of medical settings, but it can also assist and hasten communication (i.e., correspondence, dialogue, and interchange) between medical practitioners and their patients.…”

“…The purpose of this paper is to provide an evolutionary examination of telemedicine, by both applying a combined perspective, and deriving jargon and an analytical approach, from specific authorities in the health (Doolittle et al, 2005; Turner, 2003; Whitten, Davenport Sypher, & Patterson, 2000) and computer-mediated (Walther, Gay, & Hancock, 2005) communication disciplines. One of the main premises set forth by the authors is that telemedicine services have become successful in delivering and exchanging healthcare information.…”

Organizational Learning, Diffusion of Innovation, and International Collaboration in Telemedicine

“…46 In telemedicine collaboration, the health care organization at the delivery site benefits from the accumulated expert knowledge of the consultants at the provider site and also learns during the health service delivery process. 58 Provider experts will develop significant skills for improvising diagnostic and treatment procedures the more they interact with dissimilar levels of health care delivery sites via telemedicine. By their very nature, routine problems will not be the normal fare for treatment via international telemedicine.…”