Abstract
Telemedicine systems have been found to increase access to patient care and decrease healthcare costs. However, the widespread adoption and use of telemedicine technologies has been low. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate an existing store-and-forward teledermatology system used by the U.S. military. The human factors issues that emerge in the evaluation of a telemedicine system include user characteristics (e.g., motivation to use the telemedicine system), macro-organizational issues (e.g., workload distribution, communication between team members), and technology issues (e.g., comfort using digital cameras or the World Wide Web). Users of the teledermatology system completed a questionnaire and an interview session. The detailed data from the structured interviews provided insight into the nature of these macro-organizational, user characteristics, and technology issues. The goal of this project was to illustrate how human factors methods can be used to understand the factors that contribute to the success or failure of this system, identify issues/potential problems, and provide recommendations for the current system and guidance for the design of future systems.
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