Understanding Adoption of Healthcare Systems in the Philippines: Narratives and Social Network Analysis in Modeling User Engagement

Maria Regina Justina Estuar, PhD
Department of Information Systems and Computer Science

The implementation of the Universal Healthcare Law (RA 11223) describes inclusive healthcare where all Filipino citizens are automatically enrolled in the National Insurance Health Program. eHealth Systems play a vital role in implementing the universality of the law ensuring that there is efficient and accurate flow of health information within a secured environment. This study looked into different aspects of technology adoption of electronic medical records at varying stages of use to better understand how eHealth systems should be designed for seamless interoperability. A total of 18 municipal health facilities from Region VI and Region VII participated in this study represented by the municipal health officer, IT health staff and DOH designated encoder.

An open-ended questionnaire was designed adopting variables from the Technology Acceptance Model with the objective of discovering new latent variables in adopting eHealth systems. Findings show that perceived usefulness is expressed as a necessity for electronic insurance claims highly influenced by social (peer performance comparison) and economic factors (monetary gain), followed by relevance of health information in improving health conditions. Technological stress is expressed as physicians struggle to navigate through the interface while performing patient consultation. Ease of use is enhanced with availability of plug-ins that make data encoding more efficient (Wenceslao & Estuar, 2019; Dela Cruz, Pulmano, & Estuar, 2020). Social network analysis and process mining of features through usage logs indicate high activity surrounding patient record and patient consultation creation and updating, followed by viewing of dashboard with minimal but acceptable density in submissions to Philhealth (Villamor, Pulmano & Estuar, 2020). There is evidence that the electronic medical record serves as the starting point of disease surveillance especially during disasters and extreme emergencies (Estuar, Espina, Pulmano, Ventura & Romarate, 2020). Technological gaps that need to be addressed include provision for: 1) computing devices and 2) steady internet service to ensure real time submission of data. A non-technological gap that needs to be addressed include hiring of IT-skilled healthcare workforce that can serve as encoders to assure efficient submission of case forms to the network.

Published papers

  • Villamor, D. A. R., Pulmano, C. E., & Estuar, M. R. J. E. (2020, August). Understanding Adoption of Electronic Medical Records: Application of Process Mining for Health Worker Behavior Analysis. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Medical and Health Informatics (pp. 98-104).
  • Cruz, V. M. M. D., Pulmano, C. E., & Estuar, M. R. J. E. (2020). Towards an On-line Handwriting Recognition Interface for Health Service Providers using Electronic Medical Records. In HEALTHINF (pp. 383-390).
  • Cruz, V. M. M. D., Pulmano, C. E., & Estuar, M. R. J. E. (2020). User-centered Approach to Developing Solutions for Electronic Medical Records: Extending EMR Data Entry. In VISIGRAPP (2: HUCAPP) (pp. 130-137).
  • Estuar, M. R. J. E., Espina, K. E., Pulmano, C. E., Ventura, C., & Romarate, R. M. G. (2020). Health Emergency and Public Involvement in the Philippines: Syndromic Surveillance Efforts and System Integration. In Public Health and Disasters (pp. 281-298). Springer, Singapore.

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