The Social Influence on the Behavioral Intention to Use Mobile Electronic Medical Records

Past research on information systems primarily focused on system quality. However, with rapid development and popularity of information systems, discussion on the electronic medical record should not be centered merely on technological perspectives, since technologies continuously evolve and will reach maturity in the end. In contrast, enhancing the usage of mobile electronic medical records requires everlasting efforts. Moreover, prior researches ignored the influence of social interaction on behaviors because they contended that individual actions are isolated from one another. In fact, however, social influence plays an important role in determining users' intention to use mobile electronic medical records. This study is therefore based on the conformity of behavior perspective and explores factors that influence the intention to use the electronic medical record system. This study extends the technology acceptance model with contagion model. Results showed that (1) perceived usefulness and social influence affect behavioral intention to use the electronic medical record system, (2) perceived ease of use and social influence positively influence perceived usefulness as proposed in TAM. Overall, this model provides acceptable explanation on the use of the electronic medical record system.