Teleconsultation as Knowledge Management System: Recognizing the Issues Contributing to its Underutilization in Hospitals

Abstract

Teleconsultation offers a platform for remote medical care. However, they have been concerns about the poor acceptance rate towards the initiative resulting in the facility being underutilized. Studies often look at the use of teleconsultation from the perspectives of technology acceptance, in many cases forgetting the fact that it is also contributing greatly towards knowledge building and preserving within healthcare organization, offering a wealth of knowledge and expertise development opportunities. This study is looking at teleconsultation use from the perspectives of knowledge management, starting by confirming that it is of type KMS, studying how it fits in healthcare’s knowledge exchange landscape and then establishing the determinants and inhibitors for the system’s use among medical practitioners. Existing research on the use of teleconsultation are studied to determine the aspects influencing its success and the finding is hoped to pave the way for further studies on teleconsultation success in health care organizations from KM perspectives.