The outcome of consecutive training activities can overcome geopolitical instabilities, and yield a genuine change in approach of both regulators, medical administrators, medical staff and the public; as to the important contribution of palliative care services to the welfare of the patient and his/her family.
The Middle East has been experiencing an ongoing political conflict for the past several decades. This situation has been characterized by hostility often leading to violence of all sources. At times, such a conflict led to the outbreak of a military war, which was followed by an enmity between religious, ethnic, cultural, and national populations. In such environmental situations, palliative care professionals often confront major challenges including bias, mistrust, and mutual suspicion between patients and their treating clinicians. In order to overcome such obstacles, while rendering palliative care services, all professionals involved need careful planning and execution of their treatment plans. The latter is however possible, and sometimes successful even across lines of conflict, thereby promoting understanding, mutual respect, and tolerance between the involved communities and individuals.
This chapter presents a longitudinal study on the implementation of an e-health mobile application, DITIS, which supports network collaboration for home healthcare. By adopting the stakeholders’ analysis, the study explores the various groups that have directly or indirectly supported the system during its implementation. The system was originally developed with a view to address the difficulties of communication and continuity of care between the members of a home healthcare multidisciplinary team and between the team and oncologists often hundreds of kilometers away. DITIS evolved to be much more than that and even though it was introduced 5 years ago, it is considered a novel application. Despite this, its implementation has been slow, and several challenges, including the system’s sustainability, have to be faced. This chapter aims to understand these challenges and the results of the study point to a diversity of interests and different degrees of support.
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