Challenges affecting e-Health adoption in South African public hospitals: a case of Edendale Hospital.

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) plays a crucial role in improving healthcare by providing innovative and more efficient ways of accessing, communicating, and storing information. The use of ICT in healthcare is often referred to as e-Health. With the increase in costs of healthcare services and shortage of healthcare professionals in the public sector, it has become vital that healthcare organisations consider adopting e-Health. This is because e-Health enables healthcare organisations to provide services in a more efficient and cost-effective manner, and allows healthcare providers to streamline many of their processes. The adoption of e-Health in developing countries has shown numerous benefits. These benefits include, giving patients access to quality healthcare services; provide healthcare providers with the ability to make informed decisions, access to medical knowledge databases and best practices. However, the literature shows that the adoption of e-Health in South African public hospitals has been slow and has been characterised by number of challenges such as a lack of skills, lack of ICT infrastructure, lack of management support, and lack of policies and standards to support its adoption. Using Edendale hospital as a case study, this study therefore tries to understand the factors that affect e-Health adoption in the South African public hospitals. This study adopted a quantitative research approach using questionnaire surveys as means to collect data from a total of 265 respondents that represented the study’s sample. A descriptive approach was employed in this study, and questionnaires were used to obtain data from healthcare professionals. The data collected was analysed with the use of the SPSS software. During the analysis of the data, the results obtained were based on the descriptive and inferential statistics produced. Based on this study’s results, the healthcare professionals expect an e-health system to produce an accurate patient diagnosis, improve patients’ education regarding their health, ensure stronger data privacy and security and improve the quality of safety of healthcare centres. Healthcare professionals indicated that if these expectations are met by an e-Health system, then they will adopt and use it. Also, healthcare professionals indicated that if an e-Health system is web-friendly and easy to access and use, then they will adopt and use it. The study showed that the presence of facilitating conditions (such as access to the Internet and at a low cost, adequate ICT infrastructure, relevant computer skills training, government support and involvement of the hospital management) would encourage healthcare professionals to adopt and use an e-Health system.