Currently submitted to: Online Journal of Public Health Informatics
Date Submitted: Sep 9, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 14, 2025 - Dec 9, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Acceptance and Use of Teleconsultation as a Technological Strategy for Health Care: A Study with Users of the Brazilian Public and Private Health System
ABSTRACT
Background:
Understanding the factors that influence the acceptance and use of teleconsultation technologies can increase population access to digital technologies in health. However, the implementation of teleconsultation faces technological barriers and challenges such as the digital divide, especially in economically emerging countries, where many people still experience digital exclusion. In this study, we analyzed teleconsultation as a technological strategy for healthcare. We used an expanded model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technologies 2 (UTAUT2), adapted for the technology.
Objective:
This study aims to analyze factors influencing the acceptance and use of teleconsultation by users of the Brazilian health system. Additionally, the study seeks to verify the moderating effects of the variables Gender, Age, and Experience in the constructs that influence the acceptance and use of teleconsultation, and to collect data about the characteristics of the research subjects that might assist in interpreting of the results.
Methods:
A survey with 403 valid responses was conducted to collect the data. The research instrument assessed Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions, Price Value, Habit, Trust, and Digital Health Literacy about the Behavioral Intention to use and Use Behavior of teleconsultation. The proposed model was validated through Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and the data analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling.
Results:
The results indicate the influence of most of the variables presented in the UTAUT2 model, as well as the variables used to expand it. The variables Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Habit, and Trust influenced the Behavioral Intention of teleconsultation. The variables Facilitating Conditions, Habit, Digital Health Literacy, and Behavioral Intention influenced the Use of teleconsultation. Additionally, the variables Gender and Experience had a moderating role among some of the relationships of the proposed model.
Conclusions:
The original UTAUT2 Variables, with exception of Price Value, influence either the Behavioral Intention or Use Behavior of teleconsultation. Trust and Digital Health Literacy, used to expand the UTAUT2 model, showed the highest levels of influence on the variables Behavioral Intention and Use Behavior, respectively. These variables were followed by Facilitating Conditions that strongly influence the Use Behavior of teleconsultation. Habits also influence both Behavioral Intention and Technology Use Behavior. The study's results can help users, patients, health professionals and developers of technological solutions aimed at teleconsultation to understand the factors that influence its acceptance to overcome the barriers for its use by improving digital health solutions.
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.