A framework for mobile health adoption in developing countries-case study Kenya.

Abstract

Healthcare in the developing world encounters many challenges due to the level of poverty and the exponential growth of population in these countries. This is in contrast to the growth of wireless technology which has experienced a robust growth in mobile phone technology across the globe in the past two decades. This growth has brought in a new era where information is transmitted miles away in a click of a second. In this regard various groups and organizations have harnessed this technology to do more than the conventional communication purpose e.g. mobile money transfers. The purpose of this research was to bring out another dimension of mobile phone technology and explores how this gadget can be used to promote health in developing countries where healthcare is usually poor and under-developed due to multiple factors such as poor infrastructure and insufficient medical personnel. The research was conducted in Kenya and the data used was collected from the general public. It was then refined and subjected to statistical analysis to draw more comprehensive conclusions. Many researches have been carried out on m-health but most of them focus on the professionals’ point of view. This research approached the problem from the users / public perspective and tried to bring out the issues that are fundamental in rolling out a successful m-health solution to the public. The research not only focused on the technological aspect, but also on the behavioral aspect of the m-health technology by extending the UTAUT model. The final model was able to account to at least 64% variance on the users’ intention to adopt and use M-health which was noteworthy improvement compared with other researches such as (Said S. Al-Gahtani, 2007) which were carried out on user acceptance on new technology.