Examining the technology acceptance model using physician acceptance of telemedicine technology

The rapid growth of investment in information technology (IT) by organizati ons worldwide has made user acceptance an increasingly critical technology implementation and management issue. While such acceptance has received fai rly extensive attention from previous research, additional efforts are need ed to examine or validate existing research results, particularly those inv olving different technologies, user populations, and/or organizational cont exts. In response, this paper reports a research work that examined the app licability of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in explaining physician s' decisions to accept telemedicine technology in the health-care context. The technology, the user group, and the organizational context are all new to IT acceptance/adoption research. The study also addressed a pragmatic te chnology management need resulting from millions of dollars invested by hea lthcare organizations in developing and implementing telemedicine programs in recent years. The model's overall fit, explanatory power, and the indivi dual causal links that it postulates were evaluated by examining the accept ance of telemedicine technology among physicians practicing at public terti ary hospitals in Hong Kong. Our results suggested that TAM was able to prov ide a reasonable depiction of physicians' intention to use telemedicine tec hnology. Perceived usefulness was found to be a significant determinant of attitude and intention but perceived ease of use was not. The relatively lo w R-square of the model suggests both the limitations of the parsimonious m odel and the need for incorporating additional factors or integrating with other IT acceptance models in order to improve its specificity and explanat ory utility in a health-cafe context. Based on the study findings, implicat ions for user technology acceptance research and telemedicine management ar e discussed.