Abstract
ABSTRACT Context: teleconsultation can be a strategic technological tool for patients to access quality healthcare while dealing with resource challenges within health industry. It can be particularly relevant during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the social distancing world had to scramble for new technological solutions to offer quality healthcare services with reduced personal contact. Objective: our research proposes an integrative technology acceptance model to evaluate the drivers of teleconsultation adoption by patients, aligning constructs from the technology acceptance model with other drivers, such as technology readiness, trust, and self-efficacy. Methods: analyses included descriptive statistics and structural equations modeling based on survey’s data from a sample of 415 consumers. Results: results indicate significant relationships between the assessed constructs, with particular relevance on the effects of perceived usefulness, anteceded by trust and technology readiness, on attitude and intention to use teleconsultation. Conclusion: our findings provide helpful insights for health organizations and regulators associated with the diffusion of teleconsultation. The study findings also indicate that the challenging COVID-19 pandemic context may be affecting patients’ intention to adopt teleconsultation.
Highlights
Providing efficient access to health services can cause a positive social impact by addressing issues such as health and social inequalities (Kayser et al, 2019) and population aging (Dario et al, 2016)
The study’s selected methods could apply to any technological service in health, teleconsultation was elected due to its relevance in responding to persistent healthcare challenges, capacity of increasing the medical access to the population, broad applicability, and significance as a potential tool to decrease negative impacts of COVID-19 pandemic related to social distancing (Baudier et al, 2021; Ouimet et al, 2020)
Teleconsultation can be critical to mitigate the potential transmission of the virus SARSCoV-2, the COVID-19 virus, by promoting the necessary social distancing during the pandemic (Smith et al, 2020)
Summary
Providing efficient access to health services can cause a positive social impact by addressing issues such as health and social inequalities (Kayser et al, 2019) and population aging (Dario et al, 2016). Improvements in health services regarding quality, costs (Gonçalves et al, 2019), and access (Fanta & Pretorius, 2018) could be achieved through information and communication technologies (ICT) (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Telehealth — i.e., the use of ICT in health services — becomes more relevant when patients experience reduced mobility, such as the need for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic (Smith et al, 2020). Despite the importance of ICT in consumers’ health-related services, it is still necessary to improve the understanding of its acceptance and diffusion, identifying relevant factors that can influence the acceptance of innovative technologies in health services (Kayser et al, 2018). This study seeks, to investigate drivers of user acceptance of a technological health service (teleconsultation) in order to contribute to a better understanding of consumer’s intention in adopting technology innovations. Our study’s purpose gains even more importance due to some relevant gaps found currently in the debate on telehealth’s acceptance, having areas that need further conceptual development
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