Ahad Norouzzadeh,
Volume 21, Issue 3 (12-2022)
Abstract
Background: Global statistics shows that health tourism grew significantly before the outbreak of Covid-19, but with the beginning of the pandemic and the closure of countries' borders to immigrants, this trend has declined significantly. The present study aimed to identify the bottlenecks of health medical tourism in the context of the outbreak of Covid-19 and to present scientific solutions for its development using two stages of content analysis and surveying.
Materials & Methods: This research is exploratory in terms of purpose and descriptive in terms of type, which was conducted by field method. Study population was selected in two stages; the first stage consisted of 20 physicians with more than 15 years of experience in Ardabil province who were chosen by snowball sampling method and the second stage consisted of 200 employees of the province's University of Medical Sciences who were randomly selected. In order to analyze the data in the first stage, the content analysis was used in 6 stages and in the second stage, the first and second order confirmatory factor analysis test was used.
Results: The research findings showed that 9 main themes and 29 sub-themes were identified as barriers and bottlenecks in health medical tourism and 23 scientific solutions were presented to reduce barriers and bottlenecks in health medical tourism in the event of COVID-19 outbreak.
Conclusion: The adaptive fit indices are good and the RMSEA value is 0.047 which indicates that the model has a good fit.
Mehdi Hosseini, Ahad Norouzzadeh, Fatemeh Hosseini,
Volume 23, Issue 4 (2-2025)
Abstract
Background and purpose: The integration of digital technologies—computer-based systems, devices, and methods—is transforming organizational activities within the healthcare sector. However, research on the adoption of these technologies in healthcare remains limited, with a predominant focus on structural rather than behavioral factors. As the successful implementation of technology ultimately depends on the workforce, behavioral aspects play a decisive role. Therefore, this study aims to identify the principal behavioral barriers to the adoption of digital technologies in the healthcare sector.
Methods: This applied research utilized a three-stage survey methodology. The stages included: (1) identifying the most significant behavioral barriers to digital technology adoption through a literature review and expert opinions; (2) developing a hierarchical model of these barriers using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM); and (3) testing the hypotheses derived from the model with a sample of 302 healthcare professionals.
Results: The ISM model identified a hierarchy of six key behavioral barriers: lack of digital literacy, low perceived value, high perceived risk, negative attitude, resistance to change, and ultimately, non-adoption of digital technology. Based on this model, six research hypotheses were formulated. Regression analysis was conducted to test these hypotheses, and the results indicated that all six were statistically supported.
Conclusion: The findings establish that a lack of digital literacy is the most fundamental barrier to digital technology adoption in the healthcare sector. To address this primary obstacle, the study recommends targeted interventions, such as conducting national assessments of digital literacy levels among healthcare staff and implementing tailored training programs to enhance their technological competencies.
