Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Aug 20, 2020
Date Accepted: May 15, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
EHealth Adoption Issues in Low Resource Countries: A Model, Survey and Analysis of User Experience
ABSTRACT
Background:
Implementing eHealth in Low Resource Countries (LRCs) is challenged by limited resources and infrastructure, lack of focus on eHealth agendas, ethical and legal considerations, lack of common system interoperability standards, and shortages of trained workers.
Objective:
The objective of our study is to describe and study the current situation in eHealth adoption in a small number of LRCs from the perspectives of their professional eHealth users.
Methods:
We developed a structural equation model that will reflect the opinions of professional eHealth users who work on LRC healthcare frontlines. We recruited Country Coordinators in four LRCs: India, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya to help recruit participants. Through an online survey that focused on barriers to eHealth implementation, we gathered information from 114 participants. We analyzed the information using the SMART PLS3 software to help determine relationships among the constructs in the model, including eHealth utilization.
Results:
Although all of the model constructs were important to participants, some did not play a role in eHealth Utilization. However, Technology Infrastructure tended to reduce Concerns and Uncertainties which in turn had a negative impact on eHealth Utilization. Implementation Effectiveness, the Countries where participants worked, and whether they worked for Privately or Publicly funded institutions had major positive effects on eHealth Utilization.
Conclusions:
eHealth success factors can be categorized into five groups: Our study focused on frontline eHealth worker opinions concerning two of these groups: (1) technology and its support infrastructure and (2) user acceptance. We found significant disparities among the responses from participants in different countries and/or funded publicly or privately. We believe that these differences can be an advantage for those regions or countries not doing as well in eHealth adoption as the others, by sharing information and experience. Our findings could also be applied to studies of the other three categories of success factors: (3) short- and long-term funding; (4) organizational factors, and (5) political or legislative aspects. Clinical Trial: Not Applicable
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