JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Increasingly popular in the healthcare domain, electronic personal health records (PHRs) have the potential to foster engagement towards improving health outcomes, achieve efficiencies in care, and reducing costs. Despite touted benefits, the uptake of PHRs is lackluster, with low adoption rates.

Objective:

This paper reports findings from an empirical investigation on socio-technical factors affecting the adoption of PHRs.

Methods:

A research model comprising personal and technological determinants of PHR adoption is developed and validated in this study. Demographic, technographic and psychographic data pertaining to the use of PHRs was collected through an online questionnaire for past, current, and potential users. Partial least squares (PLS) based structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to estimate a structural model of cognitive and affective factors impacting intentions to use PHRs.

Results:

Analysis reveal that in addition to the expected positive impact of a PHR system’s usefulness and usability, system integration also positively effects consumer intention to adopt. Results also suggest that higher levels of perceived usability and integration do not translate into higher levels of perceived usefulness. The study also highlights the importance of subjective norm, technology awareness, and technology anxiety as direct antecedents of intention to adopt PHRs. Differential effects of adoption factors are also discussed.

Conclusions:

Our study hopes to contribute to an understanding of consumer adoption of PHRs, and to help improve the design and delivery of consumer-centric healthcare technologies. After implications for research, we provide suggestions and guidelines for PHR technology developers and constituents in the healthcare delivery chain.