Adoption of telemedicine technology by health care organizations: An exploratory study

Abstract

Recent advances in information and biomedicine technology have significantly increased the technical feasibility, clinical viability, and economic affordability of telemedicine-enabled service collaboration and delivery. Health care organizations around the world have become increasingly interested in acquiring and implementing telemedicine technology to improve or extend existing patient care and services. The ultimate success of telemedicine in an adopting organization requires adequate attention to both technological and managerial issues. This study examined organizational technology adoption, an essential management issue facing many health care organizations interested in or currently evaluating telemedicine. On the basis of a framework proposed by Tornatzky and Fleischer [1], we developed a research model for targeted technology adoption and empirically evaluated it in a survey study that involved most of the public health care organizations in Hong Kong. Results from our exploratory study suggest that the model exhibits reasonable significance and explanatory utility to differentiate between adopting and nonadopting organizations. Specifically, the collective attitude of medical staff and perceived service risks were found to be significant determinants of targeted technology adoption. Several research and management implications that emerged from our study findings are also discussed.