TAM-UTAUT and the acceptance of remote healthcare technologies by healthcare professionals: A systematic review

Abstract

ContextFew remote care technologies have been able to integrate clinical routines in the health sector, one of the reasons is the non-acceptance of these technologies by end-users who are health professionals. ObjectiveIdentify from a review of the literature the research that has studied the acceptance behavior of remote care technologies by health professionals and that has used technology acceptance model (TAM) and Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) as a theoretical framework. MethodsAn electronic search was conducted in the PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases during the period between May and June 2021. The articles were identified using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. All search results have been exported to an Excel file. Next, the titles and abstracts of the publications were assessed by two independent reviewers according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria to select relevant studies from those found in the database, Any conflict in decision-making during the selection phase was resolved by discussion among reviewers or, if necessary, with the research coordinator until consensus was reached. ResultsOf 531 potentially relevant titles (duplicates excluded), 32 studies were included in this systematic review. These studies did not test a single model, there was a variety of models tested, 7 studies tested the original TAM model and 6 tested the original UTAUT model. While 13 studies tested an extension of TAM (or modified TAM) and 6 tested an extension of UTAUT (or modified UTAUT). There are studies on a wide variety of remote health care applications in the articles included in this systematic review. In the majority of cases (21 studies 66%), the authors did not specify the type of application they studied, i.e. they used generic terms such as eHealth, mHealth, Telehealth, or telemedicine. ConclusionsThe main finding of this review shows that these two models TAM and UTAUT are still valid and used to predict the acceptance behavior of remote care technologies by health professionals, even if they date back several years and even if they were not originally formulated to be used in the context of remote care technologies.