Executive management and IT innovation in health: identifying the barriers to adoption

Abstract

This study aims to understand IT investment decisions from the perspective of senior health system executives. A two-stage study was used to investigate this highly influential, very specialized and small population of interest. The first stage involved qualitative interviews with top health executives and analysed their opinions and beliefs using an innovation diffusion theory framework. The second stage involved quantitative surveys of senior health executives to gain an understanding of their opinions regarding the organizational and technological drivers (the independent variables) and the level of IT adoption (the dependent variable). It was found that the majority of drivers identified as being significant to organizational and technological innovation are degraded in respect to IT and health. It was concluded that health executives hold a range of views that potentially inhibit the increased adoption of IT in health. In particular, beliefs about the technology itself have been identified as the most influential deterrents.