What Drives Physicians' Intention to Use Electronic Medical Record System: The Roles of Perceived Service Level, Computer Self-Efficacy, and Perceived Risk

The electronic medical record (EMR) system is one of the important components of healthcare policy in the more developed countries of the world. Implementing EMR not only reduces the associated management problems of paper medical records but also improves the repetition of laboratory tests and clinical observations, and consequently, improves the accuracy of medical decisions increasing the patient’s safety. Since physicians are the primary users of EMR, their willingness to use it deems to be a critical success factor for its implementation in hospitals. This paper aims to extend the individual-level IT adoption models by incorporating three additional variables to investigate if the individual characteristics of a physician will affect EMR adoption. A total of 217 samples were obtained from physicians through a field survey. The analysis results indicated that the perceived level of service is an important antecedent of perceived usefulness. Additionally, computer self-efficacy, perceived risk, and perceived service level are all important antecedents of perceived ease of use. Finally, implications for academics, hospital managers, governments and medical information service providers are presented to conclude this study.