Understanding the Lack of Adoption of E-commerce in the Health Sector: the Clinician's Strategic Perspective

Lucy Firth Dept of Information Systems University of Melbourne 3010 Australia Peter Frances Dept of Information Systems University of Melbourne 3010 Australia David Mellor School of Psychology Deakin University 3125 Aus.tralia While the potential for e-health to grow the acceptance of and use of e-commerce is great, there remain barriers. While community acceptance of e-commerce models for health receives much attention, acceptance by clinicians of online medical applications is also a fundamental issue. A 2003 study of the adoption of online medical applications by Australian general practitioners (GPs, family doctors) showed that not only are very few using them, but also very few have plans to do so. This paper asks why this is so. Three possible explanations are investigated: that their current IS/IT aligns with their strategy, rendering change unwarranted; that they do not have the requisite means; and that there are non-strategic, non-means reasons. After an analysis of the relevance of concepts of strategy and alignment to the medical profession, relevant concepts are applied to the data. The findings are not encouraging for government plans to improve access, equity and efficiency through online medical applications. Moreover, the findings are generalisable to the adoption of e-commerce in contexts driven by factors other than competitive zeal.