The Security Risk Perception Model for the Adoption of Mobile Devices in the Healthcare Industry

The widespread adoption of mobile devices in healthcare institutions, while beneficial, can create security concerns for medical practitioners, including physicians, nurses, and healthcare administrators. To understand how medical practitioners perceive the security risk associated with mobile devices, we developed a research model suggesting that a medical practitioner’s security risk perception is related to multiple subjective beliefs which would indirectly impact their behavior intention in both using the devices and adopting security controls in the workplace. We conducted an empirical study of our proposed model, recruiting 264 medical practitioners from three hospitals and its affiliated clinics to participate in this study. Through the empirical study we discovered that the factors that impact the medical practitioners’ behavior intentions are different between two scenarios: hospital-provided-device (HPD) and bring-your-own-device (BYOD). The results of the study suggested different administrative strategies for managing mobile devices in these two scenarios in the healthcare environment. The results also confirmed that the most significant factor driving medical practitioners to adopt security controls needed for mobile devices is to make the security controls convenient, easy-to-use, and time-saving. Keywords—Mobile devices, healthcare, security risk perception, intention to use, HIPAA.