Health professionals' perspective towards challenges and opportunities of telehealth service provision: A scoping review

Background: Telehealth, or healthcare offered through the internet, computers, and other devices for commu-nication, is rapidly increasing with changing times and technological advancement. For quality and security of such services, it is crucial that professionals are competent in offering such service. Still, lack of professionals' training has been identified as one of the barriers to implementation of telehealth. Thus, to improve such training, it is crucial to identify professionals' knowledge, experience, and perspectives towards challenges and opportunities of using telehealth.Objective: The review's objective was to answer the research question: what is known in the literature about challenges and opportunities of telehealth service provision from the perspective of health professionals?Methods: Arksey and O'Malley's five-stage approach for scoping studies was used for the review. Studies were collected across four databases: Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest and EBSCOhost. The data from the 22 included studies were reported by using frequency counts and categorization of health professionals' experiences. Results: The findings of the review led to three categories: (1) study demographics, (2) challenges for telehealth, and (3) opportunities for telehealth. The most frequently reported challenges were issues related to communi-cations, inadequate technology, or support, and need for training and knowledge to use the technology. The most frequent categories of opportunities related to improved access to services, benefits related to sharing of infor-mation sharing and experience and training of using technology. Discussion: Further research is needed to explore health professionals' experience of training, and to understand the type of support, resources, and training content they need to enhance their competency in telehealth provision.

Automated summary

This review aimed to investigate the challenges and opportunities of telehealth service provision from the perspective of health professionals. The findings revealed that the most frequently reported challenges were related to communication issues, inadequate technology and support, and the need for training and knowledge. The most common opportunities included improved access to services, information sharing, and the benefits of technology training and experience. Further research is required to explore health professionals' training experiences and understand the support, resources, and training content they need to enhance their competency in telehealth provision.