Electronic healthcare: a study of people's readiness and attitude toward performing self‐diagnosis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the introduction of self‐service technology (SST) in health diagnosis as a means to reduce costs and improve quality in the health care sector – at the same time.

A survey with an internet‐based medical self‐diagnosis application as the focal technology is conducted. The research hypotheses are tested by using a scenario and questionnaire approach, in which respondents prior to responding read a scenario.

To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling using LISREL was performed. It was found that the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for users, described according to the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) as pioneers, has a very good ability to predict future behavioral intent. TAM has an excellent capability to predict future behavioral intent of this new application in this new context, i.e. health care services.

The paper only tests TAM for a given population described as pioneers. Future research should test for other categories of users, as this may impact different drivers of behavioral intent/adoption in the TAM.

For policy makers (e.g. politicians), this study has great implications as it documents a methodology of testing a population's receptiveness to new technology – technology that can greatly improve quality, costs and satisfaction issues with government services and reduce risk when implementing the new service.

In the context of increased healthcare spending and possibly unsustainable healthcare‐funding models, the current research investigated people's readiness and attitude toward performing self‐diagnosis which may offer a patient‐centered access to health services. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this has never been done before.