Analysis of digital health solutions and the most significant challenges for rural areas

Abstract: The problem of insufficient healthcare is particularly noticeable in rural regions. Despite this, there is still little research on the digital transformation of healthcare in rural areas. This thesis aims to bridge the gap between the two research fields of "digital health” and “rural development” to find out the most significant challenges for rural areas when implementing and using digital health solutions. "Rural areas" in this work are referring to areas with low population density and small settlements in the industrialised EU countries. First of all, a “Digital Health Ecosystem” was developed based on a research review, which served as an overview of the most important factors and stakeholders regarding digital health in general. The “Digital Health Ecosystem” was used as part of the qualitative research method and interview guide to identify the challenges in transferring the overview to rural areas. An interview study was conducted with eight experts from the field of digital health with different backgrounds like technology, economics, social sciences, healthcare systems and smart village. The results show that digital health in general involves many barriers, which also apply to rural areas. The specific challenges for rural areas could be divided into four main categories: broadband and mobile networks; structural barriers; digital acceptance & competence; rural innovation. The findings reveal that the smart village concept and rural initiatives are still in their early stages and digital strategies and networks will have to spread more widely across the entire countries. Furthermore, services must be better targeted to the specific problems of rural communities. In particular, because the need for digital health solutions is very great in rural areas, where they can counteract problems like lack of healthcare providers and poor healthcare. In this context, all the general and specific challenges should not be considered separately, because the complexity of the ecosystem can only be understood by connecting all the different fields of action.