Assessment of the Influence of Contextual Issues in Evaluating eHealth Systems Usability in Tanzania

Abstract

The adoption of eHealth systems in healthcare facilities has rapidly increased in many countries. However, the main challenge has been the quality and level of usability of those adopted systems, and the complexity of the challenge varies from one country to another based on contextual issues. Usability is also linked to contextual issues, which have a direct impact on deciding the methods for providing services on similar systems. This research focuses on assessing the influence of contextual issues on metrics that are applicable for evaluating the usability of eHealth systems through a case study of Tanzania. The findings of this research were obtained through the quantitative method, and the analysis was performed through structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS and SPSS applications. It is evident from this research that contextual factors, such as user characteristics, goals and tasks, technical environment, physical environment, and resources and technology, significantly impact the usability metrics that are important to the evaluation of eHealth systems. The usability metrics for eHealth systems identified in this research include navigation visibility, accessibility, perceived ease of use, error correction, internal collaboration, information quality, external collaboration, technical quality, guide and support, and perceived benefits. This study also revealed that the usability evaluation of eHealth systems should consider both common metrics and specific metrics in order to uncover both general information system and health context-specific usability issues