Health outcome and expenditure in low-income countries: does increasing diffusion of information and communication technology matter?

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether increasing diffusion of ICTs has the potential to improve healthcare use and access to better health outcome and higher spending on health in 38 low-income countries with a panel data for the period of 1995 to 2015. The panel corrected standard error, and fixed effect Driscoll-Kraay methods were used to account for unobserved heterogeneity and cross-section dependence in the panel data. A healthoutcome index was developed using partial least square based on a structural equation model with SmartPLS (version 2) software package. The estimated results indicate that increasing diffusion of ICT impacts both the health outcome and expenditure, positively and significantly. The association is stronger when the diffusion of ICT takes place in rural areas. In conclusion, ICT is not only a means for providing better healthcare services but also an essential instrument for popularizing healthcare access and use for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Information and communication technology
• health outcome
• health expenditure
• low-income countries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The source of the data is the ‘World Development Indicators’ database published by the ‘World Bank’. All the data are publicly available from the following link of the database, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators In addition, the complete structured dataset used in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes on contributors

Rezwanul Hasan Rana is a PhD student in the ‘School of Commerce’ at the ‘University of Southern Queensland.’ He holds an MA degree in economics from ‘Middlesex University’, UK. He had published numerous research papers in quartile one journals. Rezwanul's current research focuses on health economics, in particular, economic burden non-communicable diseases and ageing. His research interests also include rising healthcare expenditure and inequality in healthcare access and utilization in developed and developing countries. Rezwanul has undertaken the PhD by publication approach and at present have several research papers under the revision stage at quartile one Journals.

Dr Khorshed Alam is Professor of Economics in the School of Commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. His recent research interests encompass health economics and policy issues. Prof Alam has received funding through federal, state and local government agencies in Australia. Currently, he is leading a health economics and policy program at the Centre for Health, Informatics and Economic Research.

Dr Jeff Gow (PhD) is a Professor of Economics in the School of Commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. He is also a Research Associate of the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa and a Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research interests encompass health economics, especially HIV/AIDS globally, and Australian agricultural economics and international wine economics.

Notes

1 Corruption perception index (2012–2016) developed by Transparency International. Retrieved from www.transparency.org/cpi.

Additional information

Funding

The paper was part of the first author’s PhD study. The PhD program was financed by the University of Southern Queensland, Australia [USQ International Stipend Research Scholarship & USQ International Fees Research Scholarship].