Moderating effect of environmental factors on ehealth development and health outcomes: A country-level analysis

Abstract

This cross-national study examines how the relationship between national eHealth initiatives and health outcomes are contingent on (1) macro-economic stability; (2) GDP per capita; and (3) institutions. Resource Based View's (RBV) resource complementary perspective and literature on Information Technology and health outcomes are used as the guiding theoretical framework. Publicly available archival data from more than 50 countries are gathered to understand the moderating effect. Health outcomes are measured through Infant Survival Rate (ISR). The results indicated that there is no direct effect of eHealth initiatives on health outcomes; however, eHealth initiatives interact with above three contingencies affecting health outcomes. Macro-economic stability moderated the relationship between eHealth development and health outcomes positively. GDP per capita and institutions moderated the relationship of eHealth development and health outcomes in a negative direction. Implications of the findings for theoretical discourse of the resource complimentary perspective and future research are discussed in this paper. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.