Background The potential benefit of mobile health (M-Health) in developing countries for improving the efficiency of health care service delivery, health care quality, and patient safety, as well as reducing cost, has been increasingly recognized and emphasized in the last few years.
Objective Limited research has investigated the facilitators and barriers for the adoption of M-Health in developing countries to secure successful implementation of the technology. To fill this knowledge gap, we propose an integrative model that explains the patient's adoption behavior of M-Health in developing countries grounded on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, dual-factor model, and health belief model.
Method We empirically tested and evaluated the model based on data collected using a survey method from 280 patients living in a developing country. Partial least squares (PLS-SEM) technique was used for data analysis.
Results The results showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, perceived health threat, M-Health app quality, and life quality expectancy have a direct positive effect on patients’ intention to use M-Health. The results also showed that security and privacy risks have a direct negative effect on the patient's intention to use M-Health. However, resistance to change was found to have an indirect negative effect on patients’ intention to use M-Health through the performance expectancy.
Conclusion The research contributes to the existing literature of health information systems and M-Health by better understanding how technological, social, and functional factors are associated with digital health applications and services use and success in the context of developing countries. With the widespread availability of mobile technologies and services and the growing demand for M-Health apps, this research can help guide the development of the next generation of M-Health apps with a focus on the needs of patients in developing countries. The research has several theoretical and practical implications for the health care industry, government, policy makers, and technology developers and designers.
The home healthcare initiative is aimed to reduce readmission costs, transportation costs, and hospital medical errors, and to improve post hospitalization healthcare quality, and enhance patient home independency. Today, it is almost unimaginable to consider this initiative without information technology. Home healthcare robots are one of such emerging technologies. Several robots have been developed to facilitate home healthcare such as remote presence robots (e.g., RP2) and Paro. Most previous research in this area has focused on technology and implementation issues of home healthcare robots, but ignored the factors that influence their adoption. To address the limitation, the current research applied and extended the UTAUT model to the home healthcare domain. The model was tested using survey questionnaire. The empirical results not only confirmed the effects of some constructs from the original UTAUT model but also identified perceived security as a new factor that directly affects usage intention of home healthcare robots. In addition, effort expectancy did not show a direct effect but an indirect effect through performance expectancy on usage intention. Several practical and theoretical implications are also discussed.
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