Identifying and communicating benefits to aid adoption of telemedicine and support business case development: Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

This research report discusses an adoption study of telemedicine support to home renal dialysis patients. We assessed benefits to support a business case for an innovative ‘home renal dialysis’ service at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The report was produced by the Cumbrian Centre for Health Technologies (CaCHeT) at the University of Cumbria. Funding was provided by the North West Shared Infrastructure Service, NHS England Local Area Team. Executive summary: • Video-as-a-service has been successfully used for nurses to remotely support home dialysis renal patients in Cumbria and Lancashire. Progressing from a successful pilot to mainstream adoption requires engagement with managers and commissioners to understand the contractual and organisational implications and present a business case. In order to do that, evidence from user stakeholders (staff and patients) was collated and presented in a way that can be used to support decision making. • The Cumbrian Centre for Health Technologies (CaCHeT) at the University of Cumbria was engaged to undertake an Adoption Study using their Stakeholder Empowered Adoption Model, an approach that involves engagement with all key stakeholders to understand barriers to and enablers of adoption. • Our objectives were to understand, from the viewpoint of stakeholders, what are the barriers to and benefits from using the renal telemedicine service and then to identify these barriers and benefits to managers and commissioners with the aim of aiding adoption of the technology.