Assessing perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use on the use of digital healthcare platform

Abstract

The growing use of digital healthcare platforms has changed the way healthcare is delivered by making medical services more accessible and giving patients greater convenience. It is important to understand the factors that lead to people continuing to use these platforms if digital healthcare programmes are to be maintained. This study looks at how perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use affect the frequency with which consumers use digital healthcare platforms in India's business-to-consumer (B2C) healthcare area. A quantitative research approach was used, involving the distribution of a structured questionnaire to 400 respondents who were selected by purposive sampling. Simple linear regression was applied to the data to assess the relationship between the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) constructs and the frequency of use of healthcare platforms. The results show that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a positive and statistically significant effect on how frequently users engage with digital healthcare platforms. At the same time, the findings suggest that these factors account for only a small part of the variation in users' behaviour, implying that ongoing engagement is probably also affected by other behavioural and contextual factors. Additional contributions: The research builds on existing research in this field as it focuses on the use of real, and not proposed, behaviours. Therefore, these findings have practical implications for healthcare platform designers and service providers who are willing to increase user engagement of their platforms by designing practical, understandable, and reachable online services that are also accessible for the target users.