article · BMC Medical Education
Clinical guidelines assist healthcare providers in making sound decisions, but printed manuals can be difficult to access and add to heavy workloads. Mobile applications offer a way to deliver these guidelines in real time. This study assessed the willingness of 803 healthcare professionals in a resource-limited setting to adopt mobile-based clinical guideline applications using a modified technology acceptance model. The findings showed that performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, and attitude directly influenced acceptance. In addition, effort expectancy and social influence significantly shaped attitudes, indirectly affecting acceptance. Overall, the evaluated factors accounted for 63 percent of the variance in professionals' acceptance of mobile guideline tools. The findings underline that system developers must design applications around user needs, while institutions should foster positive attitudes and digital literacy to encourage uptake.
In resource-constrained healthcare environments, fast access to up-to-date clinical guidance is essential for patient care. Understanding what drives healthcare workers to adopt mobile reference tools ensures that investments in digital health solutions are tailored to user expectations, operational infrastructure, and workplace culture, leading to higher long-term adoption and reduced clinician burden.
The findings provide applied insights for digital health developers, clinical software vendors, and health administrators targeting mobile reference tools at medical staff in resource-limited settings. While the study is applied behavioural research rather than a product demonstration, the evidence on user acceptance factors directly informs the design, user interface requirements, and institutional rollout strategies necessary for deploying mobile guideline applications.
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INTRODUCTION: Clinical guidelines are crucial for assisting health professionals to make correct clinical decisions. However, manual clinical guidelines are not accessible, and this increases the workload. So, a mobile-based clinical guideline application is needed to provide real-time information access. Hence, this study aimed to assess health professionals' intention to accept mobile-based clinical guideline applications and verify the unified theory of acceptance and technology utilization model. METHODS: Institutional-based cross-sectional study design was used among 803 study participants. The sample size was determined based on structural equation model parameter estimation criteria with stratified random sampling. Amos version 23 software was used for analysis. Internal consistency of latent variable items, and convergent and divergent validity, were evaluated using composite reliability, AVE, and a cross-loading matrix. Model fitness of the data was assessed based on a set of criteria, and it was achieved. P-value < 0.05 was considered for assessing the formulated hypothesis. RESULTS: Effort expectancy and social influence had a significant effect on health professionals' attitudes, with path coefficients of (β = 0.61, P-value < 0.01), and (β = 0.510, P-value < 0.01) respectively. Performance expectancy, facilitating condition, and attitude had significant effects on health professionals' acceptance of mobile-based clinical guideline applications with path coefficients of (β = 0.37, P-value < 0.001), (β = 0.44, P-value < 0.001) and (β = 0.57, P-value < 0.05) respectively. Effort expectancy and social influence were mediated by attitude and had a significant partial relationship with health professionals' acceptance of mobile-based clinical guideline application with standardized estimation coefficients of (β = 0.22, P-value = 0.027), and (β = 0.19, P-value = 0.031) respectively. All the latent variables accounted for 57% of health professionals' attitudes, and latent variables with attitudes accounted for 63% of individuals' acceptance of mobile-based clinical guideline applications. CONCLUSIONS: The unified theory of acceptance and use of the technology model was a good model for assessing individuals' acceptance of mobile-based clinical guidelines applications. So, enhancing health professionals' attitudes, and computer literacy through training are needed. Mobile application development based on user requirements is critical for technology adoption, and people's support is also important for health professionals to accept and use the application.
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DOI: 10.1186/s12909-024-05680-z
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