Drivers of mobile health acceptance and use – a consumer/patient perspective

Dissertation presented as partial requirement for obtaining the Master’s degree in Information Management, with specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceBackground: Mobile health has the potential to play a significant role on the actual reversal of paradigm in healthcare, toward a more patient-centric and more collaborative in order to improve the outcomes obtained and the quality and sustainability of health systems. Objective: Explore and understand individual m-health acceptance drivers between two groups of users, one of them with a chronic health condition. Methods: Extended unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT2) was extended with a new health-related framework, behavioural intention to recommend and new mediation effects. We applied the partial least squares (PLS) causal modelling to test the research model. We obtained 322 valid responses through an online questionnaire. Results: The drivers of behavioural intention with statistical significance are performance expectancy (PE βtotal= 0.29; P < 0.01), habit (HT βtotal= 0.39; P < 0.01), and personal empowerment (PEM βtotal= 0.18; P < 0.05). The precursors of use behaviour are habit (βtotal= 0.47; P < 0.01), and personal empowerment (βtotal= 0.17; P < 0.01), except on chronic health conditions patients’ group were none of the drivers showed significance. Behavioural intention to recommend (BIR) is significantly influenced by behaviour intention (βtotal= 0.58; P < 0.01) and PEM (βtotal= 0.26; P < 0.01). The model explained 66% of the variance in behavioural intention, 55% of the variance in use behaviour and 70% of behavioural intention to recommend. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated the significant role of personal empowerment, as a secondorder construct, on m-health acceptance context. The presence of a chronic health condition showed to impact the acceptance of this technology