The technology acceptance model: its past and its future in health care

Introduction

The study undertakes to study the efficiency of the Technology Acceptance Model specific to the health care field.

Methods

Studies included in the review had to be published on or before July 2008. They had to quantitatively test relationships between variables specified by TAM. This criterion excluded studies that measured TAM variables. Unlike Yarbrough and Smith, who reviewed qualitative studies of TAM, we were interested specifically in studies of TAM, a model of quantitative relationships between variables. Nevertheless, qualitative TAM studies can be informative.

Results

Efforts to apply TAM to health IT date back to the late 1990’s, beginning with studies by Hong Kong researchers testing the TAM and, subsequently, different versions of TAM and TPB, in a sample of 408 surveyed physicians with access to telemedicine IT. Their findings were disappointing, and they asserted that TAM was a poor fit for physician acceptance of health IT, perhaps because of professional differences between physicians and other workers who use IT.

Conclusions

Findings show that TAM predicts a substantial portion of the use or acceptance of health IT, but that the theory may benefit from several additions and modifications. Aside from improved study quality, standardization, and theoretically motivated additions to the model, an important future direction for TAM is to adapt the model specifically to the health care context, using beliefs elicitation methods.

Comments

TAM is one of the key standards that will help us integrate health electronic records into future health care settings. Revision of this process is necessary to facilitate this more smoothly.

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References

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