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High-Level Managers’ Considerations for RFID Adoption in Hospitals: An Empirical Study in Taiwan

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Abstract

Prior researches have indicated that an appropriate adoption of information technology (IT) can help hospitals significantly improve services and operations. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is believed to be the next generation innovation technology for automatic data collection and asset/people tracking. Based on the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, this study investigated high-level managers’ considerations for RFID adoption in hospitals. This research reviewed literature related IT adoption in business and followed the results of a preliminary survey with 37 practical experts in hospitals to theorize a model for the RFID adoption in hospitals. Through a field survey of 102 hospitals and hypotheses testing, this research identified key factors influencing RFID adoption. Follow-up in-depth interviews with three high-level managers of IS department from three case hospitals respectively also presented an insight into the decision of RFID’s adoption. Based on the research findings, cost, ubiquity, compatibility, security and privacy risk, top management support, hospital scale, financial readiness and government policy were concluded to be the key factors influencing RFID adoption in hospitals. For practitioners, this study provided a comprehensive overview of government policies able to promote the technology, while helping the RFID solution providers understand how to reduce the IT barriers in order to enhance hospitals’ willingness to adopt RFID.

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Notes

  1. The results showed that the Mardia coefficients were 196.298 < 2915 (53 × 55), the results of Mardia’s test confirmed that the data deviated from multivariate normality.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Chienkuo Technology University, Taiwan, R.O.C., under Grant No. CTU-101-RP-IM-003-015-A. We are thankful for all participators, in particular Dr. Tien-Cheng Hsu, director of the IS Department and Mr. Tzu-Chia Huang system engineer for the IS Department, from Changhua Christia Medcial Center. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive comments.

Conflict of interest

All authors have no financial or non-financial interests that may be relevant to the submitted work. There is without any possibility of favoritism or personal gain conducted via this study. So, the authors declare they have no conflict of interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Management, Chienkuo Technology University, No.1, Chiehshou North Road, Changhua, 500, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Hui-Min Lai & Ling-Tzu Tseng

  2. Department of Industrial Management and Institute of Health Industry Management, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, No. 123 University Road, Sec. 3, Douliou, Yunlin, 64002, Taiwan, Republic of China

    I-Chun Lin

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  1. Hui-Min Lai
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Correspondence to I-Chun Lin.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table 10 Preliminary survey items
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Appendix B

Table 11 Constructs and items
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Lai, HM., Lin, IC. & Tseng, LT. High-Level Managers’ Considerations for RFID Adoption in Hospitals: An Empirical Study in Taiwan. J Med Syst 38, 3 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-013-0003-z

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