Peoples' Perception towards Telemedicine: A Case Study on Rural Area of Bangladesh
Telemedicine is a two way, real time interactive session between the patient and the physician or practitioner at the remote location for the purpose of providing consultation. Telemedicine has enormous prospect to reduce health care service gap between rural area and urban area of Bangladesh. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the peoples' perception towards telemedicine and the factors influencing peoples' perception in telemedicine. The chi square analysis and descriptive statistics have been used as statistical tools to test the hypotheses. A self administered questionnaire has been developed and snowball sampling method is used to collect data from the study area. In addition to the traditional health care system, urban specialist doctors provide medical consultation in rural area by telemedicine. The findings of this study have revealed that age, gender, educational qualification, trust, privacy and confidentiality, awareness, service quality, existing equipment status, proper coordination, treatment cost and IT infrastructure have significant influence on the perception of telemedicine. The findings and recommendations may be taken by policymakers to make effective decisions regarding telemedicine services. Keywords: Telemedicine, Urban area, Peoples' perception, Bangladesh.