Background: Although Norway is well known for its early use of telemedicine to provide services for people inrural and remote areas in the Arctic, little is known about the pace of telemedicine adoption in Norway. The aim ofthe present study was to explore the statewide implementation of telemedicine in Norwegian hospitals over time,and analyse its adoption and level of use.Methods: Data on outpatient visits and telemedicine consultations delivered by Norwegian hospitals from 2009 to2013 were collected from the national health registry. Data were stratified by health region, hospital, year, andclinical specialty.Results: All four health regions used telemedicine, i.e. there was 100 % adoption at the regional level. The use ofroutine telemedicine differed between health regions, and telemedicine appeared to be used mostly in the regionsof lower centrality and population density, such as Northern Norway. Only Central Norway seemed to be atypical.Twenty-one out of 28 hospitals reported using telemedicine, i.e. there was 75 % adoption at the hospital level.Neurosurgery and rehabilitation were the clinical specialties where telemedicine was used most frequently. Despitethe growing trend and the high adoption, the relative use of telemedicine compared to that of outpatient visitswas low.Conclusions: Adoption of telemedicine is Norway was high, with all the health regions and most of the hospitalsreporting using telemedicine. The use of telemedicine appeared to increase over the 5-year study period. However,the proportion of telemedicine consultations relative to the number of outpatient visits was low. The use oftelemedicine in Norway was low in comparison with that reported in large-scale telemedicine networks in othercountries. To facilitate future comparisons, data on adoption and utilisation over time should be reported routinelyby statewide or network-based telemedicine services
展开▼
