Assessing the Extent of Adoption and use of Electronic Health (Ehealth) Technologies in Health Centres and Institutions in the Greater Accra Region

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that the benefits of technology have to be integrated in healthcare delivery in their Health-For-All Strategy which recommends that member countries incorporate health telematics into their healthcare system. The benefits of eHealth are thus underscored in this directive and a similar motivation underlies this study, which investigates the use and adoption of Electronic Health technologies in healthcare delivery in Ghana. The study was designed to achieve three objectives: to establish the extent of eHealth use and adoption, examine the factors driving eHealth use and adoption, and finally ascertain the constraints in eHealth use and adoption among health centres and institutions in the Greater Accra Region. The study was designed as a quantitative survey with questionnaire research instrument. The population of the study comprised 469 health centres and institutions in the Greater Accra Region, out of which a sample of 82 was taken. These were made up of one CHIPS compound, 50 clinics, four health centres, 50 maternity homes, 17 hospitals and one polyclinic. A sample of 1,640 questionnaires were administered to medical doctor, nurses, administrator/administrative staff, pharmacists, records/attendance staff and laboratory technicians in the selected institutions. The researcher received 810 questionnaires, representing 49.3% of the original sample size of questionnaires sent to respondents. About 50% of the institutions indicated that they have not integrated eHealth in their operations. Hence, eHealth technologies are not used to a large extent in the health centres and institutions in the Greater Accra Region. Among the institutions that use eHealth technologies, however, the multimedia devices, internet and imaging devices ranked foremost. eHealth is highly deployed in the patient records, pharmacy and laboratory diagnosis departments. Hospitals and clinics administrators ranked as the major professional groups, which use eHealth technologies. The study further concludes that the institutional characteristics and health care manager characteristics have a high influence on eHealth adoption. However, factors related to performance expectancy and effort expectancy only have low influence on the adoption of eHealth devices and systems. The study also concludes that the major constraints affecting the use and adoption of eHealth were perceived corruption involved in the procurement or the supply chain of eHealth technologies, lack of commitment of the health care managers in instituting eHealth and ignorance about ICT solutions. Accordingly, the study recommends that the Ministry of Health use a bi-partisan approach to roll out eHealth system adopting programmes into the institutions, hospitals and clinics. This can be done through proper budgetary allocation; leverage of favourable professional factors to institute eHealth in the sector; embarking on a programme that integrates software into singular operational entity that ensures that information is not held in silos or stand-alone departments as well as instituting improved monitoring and audit systems to curtail corruption in the sector.