Presentation Series: IS-HEART
Speaker: Burak Onurlu (IM master student under thesis supervision of Uzay Kaymak)
Presentation title: RFID Technology in Outpatient Logistics: An Analysis of Its Potential and Acceptance
Abstract: The dramatic and continuous increase in health care spending threatens the economic stability and safety of the countries. Therefore, the governments and the health care organizations are forced to rethink and redesign their strategies in order to provide timely and cost effective healthcare services. Within this perspective, today’s technological developments have drawn attention of decision makers in health care industry due to their potential benefits in terms of efficiency and cost reduction.
In this research, we focus on the main outpatient logistics problems and the recent use of a relatively new technology, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), in order to solve those problems. In addition, the main concentration of the research is to explore the potential and the adoption of RFID in outpatient logistics. 109 Dutch health care professionals with diverse backgrounds, from doctors and nurses to managers and IT specialists, participated in a web-survey which was based on one of the most popular technology adoption theories, the Technology Acceptance Model.
The proposed research model and the collected data were analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling. The results of the research shows that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are the significant determinants of behavioral intention to use RFID technology in outpatient logistics. They can also explain/predict 67% of the variance in health care professionals’ behavioral intention to use RFID technology in outpatient logistics. Moreover, based on the Method Evaluation Model, the results suggest that RFID technology will likely be adopted in practice by health care professionals.