Telehealth readiness assessment tools.

In planning a telehealth project, a readiness assessment can help to improve the chances of successful implementation by identifying the stakeholders and the factors that should be targeted. We conducted a literature search and identified six questionnaires on readiness that can be used when implementing telehealth projects. Only one of them was sufficiently generic to be used with all kinds of telehealth projects and with different groups of participants (patients and public, health-care practitioners and organization personnel like health-care managers and technical support managers), but it had rather limited psychometric evaluation. Two of them had had good psychometric evaluation but they were specific to particular telehealth projects and groups of stakeholders. All six published questionnaires were in English. We have developed and validated a French-Canadian version of the practitioner and organizational telehealth readiness assessment tool.

Developing and validating the French-Canadian version of the practitioner and organizational telehealth readiness assessment tools.

Only one telehealth readiness assessment tool, that of Jennett et al., covers all types of telehealth projects, regardless of health-care provision context. However, this instrument is only available in English and has not undergone psychometric evaluation. We developed a French-Canadian version of the Practitioner Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool and the Organizational Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool. Transcultural validity was assessed by nine practitioners and 12 clinical project co-ordinators or administrators. For practitioners and managers, there was no significant difference between the scores of the English and the French versions of the questionnaires. The results showed that the telehealth readiness of co-ordinators or administrators was greater than that of practitioners when the range in scores was taken into account. The French-Canadian versions of the two questionnaires make it possible to assess telehealth readiness among French speakers. However, other studies involving patients will be necessary to validate the Patient-Public Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool.