Health Care Workers’ Perspectives on the Barriers and Facilitators to Digital Health Technology Use to Support Symptomatic Cancer Diagnosis in Southern Africa: Qualitative Study

To capitalize on the potential benefits of eHealth use among HCWs, such as to support early cancer diagnosis, infrastructural challenges must be addressed, and tools designed to meet user needs and be integrated into clinical workflow. As in many other resource-constrained settings, significant improvements in development are required for the value of eHealth to be realized in Southern Africa. Additionally, where resources such as electricity are limited, their use for eHealth needs to be weighed against use for other priorities such as operating ventilators. Furthermore, energy production in these regions is largely reliant on burning fossil fuels, and thus, the use of eHealth tools risks contributing negatively to climate change. The findings of this study can be used to guide future eHealth design or implementation strategies that are more contextually suitable.