Telecare acceptance as sticky entrapment: A realist review

Abstract

Background Telecare is important in future governmental health and social plans. Telecare acceptance is one of the factors that appears to be vital for uptake and thus important to understand. Different technology acceptance models have been applied but judged to be insufficient in assessing telecare acceptance with older people. The purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate why the existing technology acceptance models fall short when applied to telecare and propose an improved approach for assessing telecare acceptance. Methods This is a realist review with iterative searches. Four search engines covering approximately 50 databases in health, social science and technology were used in each of the three stepwise searches. The searches started wide, funnelling down to pursue the interesting results that emerged. According to the realist approach, particular focus has been on context, and transparency is applied by explicitly documenting the reasons for decisions to enable readers to make their own judgments. Results & Discussion This literature review provides evidence for the shortcomings of the exciting technology acceptance models when used for assessing telecare acceptance. By applying entanglement theory on issues where technology assessment models have shown inadequate, new perspectives emerge. These perspectives are significant for users’ acceptance of telecare, however not highlighted when using technology acceptance models. These perspectives include dealing with imagined situations, fear of not handling technology, the significance of contexts, and users’ adjustments of technology to better suit their needs. The identification of these dependences and dependencies appear to be essential for assessing telecare acceptance, and previously not captured by technology acceptance models.