Understanding Dynamic Collaboration in Teleconsultation

Abstract

Information and communication technology has been widely deployed in the provision of healthcare for decades. Teleconsultation, one of the new means of providing healthcare solutions, has been prevalently implemented in numerous countries. In principle, it is expected with great potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare service through wide accessibility and cost control. However, many teleconsultation systems have been installed but abandoned rapidly or used at a disappointing low level. This paper explores the antecedents of low usage in post-adoption of teleconsultation service in clinical practice. We identify specific theoretical attributes targeted on the research problem and extend the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework into a multi-dimensional analytical framework. We design a comparative case study and conduct deductive analysis to test our propositions using data from multiple sources. The proposed analytical framework and empirical findings not only provide theoretical contribution by articulating the TOE framework to reflect the specific and distinguished characteristics in teleconsultation services, but also provide implications for practitioners to develop better strategies for teleconsultation collaboration.

Keywords:

• teleconsultation
• telemedicine
• post-adoption
• TOE framework
• media synchronicity theory

Acknowledgement

The authors are also grateful to Dr Stella Tian, Mr Xinyang Wang, and Dr Xiaoming Yang for their help on data collection.

Funding

This study was partially funded by NSFC 71101037, NCET-12-0146 and the “Hong Kong Scholars Program.”

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2013.854730.

Notes on contributors

Miss Ziyu Yan is currently a Ph.D. student in the Information Systems Department, City University of Hong Kong. She attained her degree of Master of Science in Electronic Commerce at the City University of Hong Kong. Miss Ziyu Yan is a current member of the SIG-Health Group and her research interest is in IT-related healthcare issues. Her works have been published in conference and workshop proceedings, such as the Americas Conference on Information Systems, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, and China Summer Workshop on Information Management.

Dr. Xitong Guo is an Associate Professor of Management Science and Engineering at the Harbin Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong and Ph.D. in Management Science at the University of Science and Technology of China. His current research focuses on e-Health, collaborative process management, IT-enabled innovation, and social computing. His work has been published or accepted in referred journals and conference proceedings, such as Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, and the International Conference on Information Systems.

Douglas R. Vogel is Professor of Information Systems and is an Association for Information Systems (AIS) Fellow as well as AIS President. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Minnesota in 1986. Professor Vogel has published widely and directed extensive research on group support systems, knowledge management, and technology support for education. He has recently been recognized as the most cited IS author in Asia-Pacific. He is currently engaged in introducing mobile devices and virtual world support for collaborative applications in educational and health systems. Additional detail can be found at http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/staff/isdoug/cv/.