Smartphone-based Healthcare Technology Adoption in Malaysian Public Healthcare Services

抄録

The present study attempts to examine the impact of smartphone-based healthcare technology (SHT) adoption in public healthcare services. System dynamics is used to understand the substantial impact of SHT adoption among patients and doctors would improve the discharge rate and patient’s medical costs. The results show that the changes in the proportion of SHT adoption among patients seem to be significant to the perceived medical expenses and the patient discharge rate from public hospitals. This is due to the fact that the increase in the proportion of patient using SHT would reduce the proportion of basic medical expenses incurred by patients and increase inpatient discharge rate as well. On the other hand, the proportion of both medical doctors and patients adoption of SHT for medical consultation is found to be vital to improve the number of patients being discharged from hospital wards. This impact is implicitly shown from the model through the effectiveness of health consultation using common available social networking apps. In conclusion, the findings of this work are hoped to provide an apprehension to the hospital management’s decision makers and doctors that smartphone devices are considered vital to improve healthcare delivery in Malaysian government hospital and to reduce the burden of medical costs.