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An empirical study on acceptance of secure healthcare service in Malaysia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia: a mobile cloud computing perspective

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Abstract

The advent of information and communication technology in healthcare sector has taken the world to a new pervasive horizon. Cloud computing is a ubiquitous way of information and data transfer. Implementation of cloud computing in daily healthcare operations can bring numerous benefits. However, there is a resistance towards the usage of this modern technology by healthcare organizations and staff due to lack of IT exposure, resources, infrastructure, patient data privacy, and security issues. Therefore, there is a need to provide an empirical evidence on how healthcare industry is responding to this new technology and to point out the factors that hinder its implementation in healthcare sector. In this paper, we aim to conduct an empirical study to investigate the behavioural intention of healthcare organizations’ staff, towards the usage of cloud-based healthcare services to carry out their daily jobs. We used unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) as a theoretical basis to test the predictors i.e. performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence in order to find the behavioural intention of the healthcare organizations’ staff. Age, experience, and gender were also studied as moderators to investigate their effect on the behavioural intention of the user. An online questionnaire-based survey was conducted with 147 healthcare professionals in Malaysia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The results showed that social influence was the least influencing predictor in determining the dependent variable and the years of experience positively influenced user’s behavioural intentions towards using cloud-based healthcare services.

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Acknowledgements

This Project was funded by the National plan of Science, Technology and Innovation (MAARIFAH), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Award Number (12-INF2817-02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Control & Information Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian, People’s Republic of China

    Rooh ul Amin

  2. Department of Computer Science, FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Irum Inayat

  3. College of Computer and Information Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Basit Shahzad

  4. Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Kashif Saleem

  5. School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian, People’s Republic of China

    Li Aijun

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  1. Rooh ul Amin
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  2. Irum Inayat
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  4. Kashif Saleem
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  5. Li Aijun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Irum Inayat.

Appendix A

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Amin, R.u., Inayat, I., Shahzad, B. et al. An empirical study on acceptance of secure healthcare service in Malaysia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia: a mobile cloud computing perspective. Ann. Telecommun. 72, 253–264 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-016-0553-4

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