Physicians’ motivations to use mobile health monitoring: a cross-country comparison

ABSTRACT

While mobile device receives increasing attention as a practical tool to remotely check patients’ health, little research has shed light on physicians’ acceptance of this information and communication technology. This study attempts to fill this research gap by examining how Japanese and Spanish physicians perceive a series of factors associated with mobile diabetes monitoring acceptance, and whether any differences exist in these perceptions between the countries due to different levels of physician scarcity, which is operationalised as the number of physicians available per 10,000 population. The hypotheses were tested by empirical surveys in Japan and Spain. In total, 471 and 497 usable responses were obtained from Japanese and Spanish physicians, respectively. In both countries, physicians were likely to embrace clinical expectations (perceived value) and appreciate the ability to check patients’ health remotely (ubiquitous control) as the main benefits of mobile diabetes monitoring. In terms of cross-country comparison, the influence of personal innovativeness on perceived value and ubiquitous control was stronger in Japan (greater physician scarcity), compared with Spain (less physician scarcity).

KEYWORDS:

• Health information technology
• mobile health
• physicians
• technology assessment
• telemedicine

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Shintaro Okazaki http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4190-0614

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation [grant number ECO2011-30105].