Improving user acceptance of health-care telematics

Telehealth represents a new approach to health-care with the potential for improving accessibility and reducing costs. Over the years, technology has become increasingly interactive, cheaper and standardized. Despite this, th e uptake of technology has been low. One of the main reasons is that the in troduction of telematics in health-care requires more than technology and s oftware-organizational and cultural change is required as well. A suggested approach is based on the principles of service quality and quality managem ent, to produce a partnership between the users and the developers of new t echnologies. This will in turn make it possible to bring user-validated req uirements into the design of the system and create feelings of ownership an d motivation on the part of users, in order to prepare their environment fo r the change. The methodology has been effectively used in various projects of the Telematics Application Programme of the European Commission.