Exploring Barriers to Implementing Telerehabilitation from experiences of managers, policymakers, and providers of rehabilitation services in Iran: A Qualitative Study

Background:Telerehabilitation is an emerging technology that uses digital technologies to perform evaluation, counseling, treatment, and telemonitoring to provide rehabilitative care to patients in various locations such as homes, communities, health centers, and workplaces. This approach has advantages such as reducing costs and overcoming barriers of distance and time. Reducing patient-rehabilitator interaction, and being hard to teamwork and express thoughts and feelings are some disadvantages of this approach. TR services are provided by a variety of rehabilitation specialists. The aim of the study was to identify barriers in the way of implementing TR in Iran Methods:This study was conducted using a conventional content analysis method based on a qualitative approach. 26 people were selected as participants based on purposive sampling with maximum diversity. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and managed using MAXQDA 10 software. Results:765 codes were extracted by conducting interviews and coding. The findings of this study are classified into seven main categories and 32 sub-categories. The main categories are insufficient infrastructure, legal, physical, and moral hazards, lack of priority and insufficient determination, insufficient support of the public and non-governmental organizations, poor knowledge in using equipment, Lack of knowledge and negative attitude, and low capacity in comparison with face-to-face rehabilitation. Conclusion:This study shows that based on the insights from the experiences of participants, inadequate infrastructure and poor knowledge of the use of equipment are the most important obstacles in the way of TR. This study reveals that the implementation of TR in Iran encounters several obstacles and eliminating them requires serious effort.