Challenges and Opportunities of Telemedicine: A Narrative Review Study

Immediate access to special clinical services remotely has an important role in transferring information, informing clinical diagnosis, and distance learning. Health systems have faced with various opportunities and challenges during implementation of telemedicine. This study aimed to explore the challenges and opportunities in health systems for implementation of telemedicine. In this comprehensive review, local and international databases were searched according to a search strategy from January 2000 to January 2018. Then, an analysis was conducted on 24 selected papers. Use of telemedicine technology results in many challenges related to informational and communicational infrastructures, health, standards, laws and regulations, training, and security. Despite these challenges, significant opportunities are also presented specially in regards to pervasiveness of informational and communicational information, providing universal access to updated information, and disappearance of technology gaps through globalization, which can be suitable methods for eliminating the aforementioned challenges.