Telemedicine Adoption by Different Groups of Physicians

This study addresses the factors that could affect the intention of physicians to adopt telemedicine technology. Based on the theoretical foundations of technology adoption models, a revised model is proposed and tested via a questionnaire with two groups of physicians that were, at the time of the survey, just about to use telemedicine technology. Group A is composed of physicians from a large urban healthcare provider institution involved in clinical, teaching, and research activities. An Intranet solution for teleradiology and teleconferencing based on ATM technology is being implemented. Physicians received no training regarding this technology. Group B is composed of physicians from rural areas who received training just before using the telemedicine network that links 43 sites in the same area. Results analyzed with PLS indicate that in both cases, physicians' perception of usefulness of telemedicine is positively related to their intention to adopt this technology. This is the only common result between the two groups. Physicians from group A have the intention to adopt telemedicine because its ease of use makes it sound useful. Physicians from group B perceive the ease of use of telemedicine as being associated with its usefulness, which is then related to their intention to adopt telemedicine. Specialists and researchers from group A indicated that their perceived effort and persistence is related to their perceived ease of use, which is linked with perceived usefulness. Both perceived ease of use and usefulness have an impact on their intention to adopt telemedicine, whereas the image they project by using it has no bearing on their intention to adopt telemedicine. Finally their perceived voluntariness of use has a negative and significant impact on their behavioral intention to adopt telemedicine. This result may be explained by the fact that these physicians, due to their heavy load of research and clinical practice, have less time to assess new technologies related to their work and they probably prefer that someone else do the legwork for them