Initial Empirical Testing of Potential Factors Contributing to Patient Use of Secure Medical Teleconferencing

Providing timely and cost-effective healthcare appears to be significantly desired. Factors such as computer skills and comprehension of instructions impact people’s perception of the accessibility of such alternatives, especially for medical professionals. There are limited studies examining the aforementioned factors in information systems (IS) literature in the context of medical teleconferencing (ehealth) from the patients’ perspective. Thus, the purpose of this research study was to examine the underlying structure of four factors, namely IS usage (ISU), computer self-efficacy (CSE), ethical severity of misusing IS (ESMIS), and the resistance to use IS (RESUIS). Based on data gathered from 140 participants, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted, using the partial least squares (PLS) technique. Results indicated a very strong validity and reliability of the constructs, however, with a relatively low overall model predictability. Furthermore, the constructs of CSE and RESUIS appear to demonstrate significant contribution toward ISU.