Health Seekers’ Acceptance and Adoption Determinants of Telemedicine in Emerging Economies

Abstract

This study investigates health seekers’ acceptance and adoption determinants of telemedicine services in a rural public hospital setting in an emerging economy using an adapted, extended Technology Acceptance Model. The present study pursued synthesising a plethora of existing literature and contextualised the significance of seven broad categories of potential determinants that significantly affect patients’ acceptance and adoption intentions: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, self-efficacy, service quality, privacy and data security, social influence, and facilitating conditions. The partial least square structural equation modeling technique was employed to test the conceptual model and research hypotheses. A cross-sectional survey was administered among 500 telemedicine users in randomly selected rural and remote areas of Bangladesh. Excluding self-efficacy and ease of use, five determinants expressively contributed to patients’ acceptance of telemedicine adoption, explaining 65% of the variance (R2) in behavioural Intention. The empirical findings have the quality of rigour obtained from rich data sets in health informatics and can contribute to build telemedicine into an institutionalised health infrastructure in Bangladesh and similar settings. Pertinent implications, limitations and future research directions were recommended to secure the long-term sustainability of telemedicine healthcare projects.