Barriers and Facilitators to Use of eHealth Technologies Among Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury

Research Objectives To explore and identify barriers and facilitators to engagement with eHealth technologies among individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). Design Qualitative descriptive study. Setting This study was conducted in the general community setting. Participants Community-dwelling individuals with SCI were recruited across Canada. The average age of the 20 participants was 48 years old; 8 participants were male, 12 participants experienced traumatic SCI. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures Data were collected via one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with a sub-sample of 20 participants enrolled in a larger, clinical trial. Analysis of the transcripts was undertaken using a four-phase process of content analysis. Results Our analysis identified three main barriers and facilitators to engagement with eHealth technologies. Barriers included (1) overcoming a digital divide to comprehending and utilizing mHealth technologies, and (2) navigating internet resources that provide too much information, and (3) interacting with these technologies despite having limited hand function. Facilitators included (1) being able to use voice activation features, (2) being able to interact in an online community network, and (3) having previous successful experiences with eHealth technologies. Conclusions By identifying barriers and facilitators to eHealth technology use among people with SCIU, these findings may have short-term impacts on informing researchers and clinicians on important factors impacting engagement of individuals with SCI with telemedicine, mobile, and web apps, and long-term impacts on informing future development of eHealth interventions and tools among chronic disease populations. Author(s) Disclosures We report no real or perceived conflicts of interest.