Research uncovers technology adoption factors

Early results from a major research programme on technology adoption in healthcare have shown recurring themes in the analysis of barriers and facilitators, a London conference heard.

Speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine’s TeleMed and eHealth ’06 meeting in London, Frances Mair, professor of primary care research at Glasgow University, listed recurring problems as: design-orientated barriers; intrusive technology and rigidity of systems; cost and lack of testing for systems.

On the plus side, factors that facilitated technology adoption included: positive inter-agency co-operation, flexibility, ease of use and organisational willingness and ability to order information in ways that made working life easier.

Factors that could work as barriers or facilitators were the relationship between health professionals and patients and security issues.

The research programme, which involves researchers from Glasgow, London, Dundee and Newcastle, has a broad aim of deepening understanding of how e-health services are implemented and integrated.

Professor Mair explained there was enthusiasm for using technology in healthcare and policy makers have been quick to recognise the potential of e-health.

“There’s the key problem of integrating new patterns of service into the working lives of health professionals. There are lots of pilots and demonstrations but there are far fewer real services,” she said.

One of the research programme’s main aims is to develop a Technology Adoption Readiness Scale (TARS) which could be used to test the readiness of health professionals to use new e-health systems and their potential for integration into particular clinical settings.

Before that can be developed, however, the multi-centre teams of researchers are looking at e-health adoption from the perspective of both the healthcare professionals and the implementers.

The first work package is a review of the literature. The second package comprises interviews with health professionals, a third will develop the TARS and the fourth focuses on implementers.