Understanding Dr. No - a Comprehensive Model Explaining Physicians' Acceptance of Telemedical Systems.

Today’s healthcare systems face tremendous challenges: demographic change and an ageing society lead to increasing healthcare needs and costs. Telemedical systems (TMS) might be an answer by improving healthcare systems’ efficiency and effectiveness. However, the diffusion of such systems is still low. A major barrier is the lack of acceptance by the key players in healthcare: physicians. To enhance the understanding of their intention to use TMS, we propose a comprehensive conceptual model and tested it empirically with survey data gathered from 213 medical doctors in Germany. Our statistical analysis confirms a very high explanatory power of the model. We extend the body of knowledge in this field of research by showing significant influences on physicians’ intentions to use TMS. The influencing factors stem from physicians’ technological contexts (data security and data reliability), financial contexts (billability and costs), individual contexts (technology affinity, subjective norms and motivations), and organizational contexts (compatibility of TMS with existing processes). Our findings have important implications for policy-makers, physicians' associations, providers of TMS, and system engineers. We give specific recommendations regarding the design of TMS and the regulatory framework. Furthermore, we identified specialized clinicians as the most promising lead-users.