Citizens' Health Information Privacy Concerns: A Multifaceted Approach

The increasing prevalence of ICTs in healthcare is transforming the health services received by patients. This transformation is in part facilitated by healthcare providers’ utilization of eHealth technologies, which provide physicians with access to the health data required to treat patients. The recent emergence of mobile health (mHealth) technologies such as mHealth applications and personal health records (PHRs) enable citizens to play a role in this transformation by presenting them with the opportunity to manage their own health. The success of both eHealth and mHealth technologies is contingent on acceptance and adoption by both physicians and citizens. However in order to ensure success, the factors driving or inhibiting acceptance and adoption of these technologies must be understood. In the existing literature, factors driving citizen acceptance of health ICTs are under-examined. This paper focuses on citizens’ health information privacy concerns (HIPC), which are regularly cited as a barrier to health ICT implementation. The paper presents a framework to investigate the influence of citizens’ HIPC on their acceptance and adoption of health ICTs. An upcoming study which tests this framework and the hypotheses presented in the paper is also outlined.