Analyzing older users' home telehealth services acceptance behavior - applying an Extended UTAUT model

Cimperman, Miha (author), Zalaznik, Maja (author), Trkman, Peter (author)

Background Although telehealth offers an improved approach to providing healthcare services, its adoption by end users remains slow. With an older population as the main target, these traditionally conservative users pose a big challenge to the successful implementation of innovative telehealth services. Objectives The objective of this study was to develop and empirically test a model for predicting the factors affecting older users’ acceptance of Home Telehealth Services (HTS). Methods A survey instrument was administered to 400 participants aged 50 years and above from both rural and urban environments in Slovenia. Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the causal effect of seven hypothesized predicting factors. HTS were introduced as a bundle of functionalities, representing future services that currently do not exist. This enabled users’ perceptions to be measured on the conceptual level, rather than attitudes to a specific technical solution. Results Six relevant predictors were confirmed in older users’ HTS acceptance behavior, with Performance Expectancy (r=0.30), Effort Expectancy (r=0.49), Facilitating Conditions (r=0.12), and Perceived Security (r=0.16) having a direct impact on behavioral intention to use HTS. In addition, Computer Anxiety is positioned as an antecedent of Effort Expectancy with a strong negative influence (r=-0.61), and Doctor’s Opinion influence showed a strong impact on Performance Expectancy (r=0.31). The results also indicate Social Influence as an irrelevant predictor of acceptance behavior. The model of six predictors yielded 77% of the total variance explained in the final measured Behavioral Intention to Use HTS by older adults. Conclusion The level at which HTS are perceived as easy to use and manage is the leading acceptance predictor in older users’ HTS acceptance. Together with Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Security, these three factors represent the key influence on older people’s HTS acceptance behavior. When promoting HTS, interventions should focus to portray it as secure. Marketing interventions should focus also on promoting HTS among health professionals, using them as social agents to frame the services as useful and beneficial. The important role of computer anxiety may result in a need to use different equipment such as a tablet computer to access HTS. Finally, this paper introduces important methodological guidelines for measuring perceptions on a conceptual level of future services that currently do not exist.

• Language: English
• Keywords: medicine, health services, telemedicine, informatics, telework
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication version: Author Accepted Manuscript
• Year: 2016
• Number of pages: Str. 22-31
• Numbering: Vol. 90
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-115197
• UDC: 614.2
• ISSN on article: 1386-5056
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2016.03.002
• COBISS.SI-ID: 23020006
• Publication date in RUL: 17.04.2020

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: International journal of medical informatics
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 1386-5056
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1665556

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.
• Licensing start date: 17.04.2020

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: medicina, zdravstvo, telemedicina, informatika, delo na daljavo

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: J5-6816
• Name: Prenova poslovanja - od poslovnih modelov do inovativnih procesov