Understanding user adoption of mobile health technology in a resource constrained environment

Whereas Mobile health is becoming an important form of Information Technology enabled delivery for health care, its adoption and use by healthcare professionals still faces challenges. These include the lack of full understanding of what motivates user acceptance and adoption of mobile health applications. In the past decade, Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology has been used to develop models that help to predict and explain user acceptance and utilization of information technology in general. However, currently no studies are reported that use this theory to explain the adoption and use of mobile health applications in resource constrained environments. This paper presents the results of a study that uses this theory in an attempt to explain acceptance and utilization of the mobile health applications by health care professionals in remote constrained environments. The results confirm that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and disturbance concerns are important considerations to healthcare professionals to adopt mobile health tools especially the mobile phone in Uganda. The results also help to validate the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology.