Previously submitted to: JMIR mHealth and uHealth (no longer under consideration since Apr 21, 2022)
Date Submitted: Mar 11, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Health professionals attitude, willingness to use mobile health technology and its associated factors in Dessie town public health facilities, northeast, Ethiopia : a cross sectional study design
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
The improved telecommunication infrastructure and reduced device costs in developing countries, including in Ethiopia increases the mobile phone penetration significantly. Nowadays, digitization of information to improve the access, quality and equity of health services becomes increasing important. However, resistance to use mobile technology for improving the health service among health professionals remains the problem in the health care system.
Objective:
Objective:
This study aimed to determine the attitude and willingness to use mobile health technology and its associated factors among health professional in Dessie town public health facilities northeast, Ethiopia.
Methods:
Methods:
A facility based cross-sectional study was conducted from March to April, 2016 in Dassie town of public health facilities, Northeast Ethiopia. A total of 422 health professionals who were working at public health facilities were selected using the proportionate probability sampling technique. Data collected using a standard structured and self-administered questionnaire, and an observational checklist were cleaned, coded, and entered into Epi-info version 7.2.1, and transferred into SPSS version 20 for further statistical analysis. Variables with a p-value of less than 0.05 at the multiple logistic regression analysis were considered as statistically significant.
Results:
Result: In this study, attitude and willingness to use mHealth among health professionals were found to be76.5% and 80.1%, respectively. In multivariable logistic regression analysis, health professionals’ age ranged from 20-29 years [AOR= 2.50, 95% CI: 1.22, 5.12], being male [AOR = 2.73, 95% CI: 1.46, 5.09], had access to internet [AOR=3. 51, 95% CI: 1.55, 7.96], and prior use of mobile phone for expected date of delivery (EDD) and for pulse rate monitoring were significantly associated with the attitude to use mHealth. While, willingness to use the technology was significantly associated with access to the internet [AOR=3. 92, 95% CI: 1.67, 9.16], prior mobile phone use of for diagnosis [AOR= 2.84, 95%CI: 1.35, 5.95], EDD calculation [AOR =2. 72, 95% CI: 1.23, 6.03] and pulse rate monitoring [AOR=2. 68, 95% CI: 1.28, 5.59].
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
Health professional’s attitude and willingness to use mHealth were low when compared to previous studies. Access to internet, previous use of mobile phone for health services such as for pulse rate monitoring and for calculating date of delivery, younger age (20-29 years) and being male were among the reported significant variables. Therefore, motivating health professional to use the mobile phone to improve health services and working to access free internet at the health facilities are highly recommended.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.