Acceptance of cloud-based healthcare services by elderly Taiwanese people

Abstract

With the increasingly aging population and the advances in information technology (IT), cloud service has become an important health informatics topic. Cloud-based healthcare services have significant potential to enable the elderly to live independently and to access health-care services with ease. Despite this potential, there are gaps in our understanding of how the elderly decide to use such services. A field survey was conducted in Taiwan to collect data from the elderly, and the structural equation model was used to examine the data. The results indicated that attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, perceived risk, and trust are key determinants in the elderly’s usage intentions. The results also indicated that perceived risk and trust integrated with the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model provides an improved method for predicting the elderly’s intentions to use cloud-based health-care services. Finally, the implications of this study are discussed.