Factors influencing mHealth adoption among Malaysians with confirmed COVID-19

Abstract

Times of COVID-19 pandemic, mHealth (mobile health) played an important role in the public healthcare delivery system. mHealth could be used to monitor patients with mild symptoms who had tested COVID-19 and on home quarantine. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the factors contributing the intention to use and usage behavior on mHealth and investigate the role of home quarantine on mHealth adoption. This study applied the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) model to assess mHealth technology adoption. The study outcome explored the factors involved in mHealth technology adoption or rejection among Malaysians with confirmed COVID-19. This research applied to mixed method triangulation study design and divided into two phases. Phase one was quantitative method which was a cross-sectional study using a validated questionnaire. Subsequently phase two of this study was commenced using a qualitative method to the selected participants via convenience purposive sampling. A total of 101 respondents were eligible for the research survey and 5 individual for interview phase. Analyzed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient ; Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Facilitating Condition (FC), Social Influence (SI), Habit, Price Value (PV), Hedonic Motivation (HM) and Usage Behavior (USE) showed significant correlation for mHealth adoption. However no significant correlation between Home Quarantine (HQ) & mHealth adoption was demonstrated. By qualitative findings, Effort Expectancy (EE), Facilitating Conditions (FC), Hedonic Motivation (HM) and Behavioral Intention (BI) were contribute to barriers to use of mHealh technology among quarantined individuals. Findings in this study might be useful for healthcare institution, mHealth application developer and clinicians to identify major barriers of mHealh usage and finding ways for concrete solutions on remote monitoring assessment. Adoption and continuance of mHealth usage for home quarantined COVID-19 individuals were important for clinicians to assess and detecting early an abnormality to prevent silent hypoxia and worsening symptoms that lead to home mortality.