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In the recent era of internet connectivity and technological advancement, the world is moving towards a “super-connected Society”. Almost every industry uses information technology to increase productivity, enhance connectivity, and deliver superior customer experiences; healthcare is also no exception. In the Post Covid scenario, the Healthcare sector has evolved and become more digitised and technology-centric to cater to varied patient needs remotely and in person. Healthcare has become one of the primary pivots of techno-centric, highly connected e-commerce society; where technology is used not only for communication but also used for the live tracking of patient's activity, digitally storing the record of patients using electronic health records, educating patients and training the physician (M. Z. Alam, Hoque, et al., 2020). In advanced nations, while digitisation is for superior connectivity and care delivery betterment, in developing countries like India, it is a means towards mitigating the problem of the limited healthcare workforce and related reachability(1 Doctor for 1,511 People, 1 Nurse for 670 — Covid Exposes India's Healthcare' Fault Lines,' n,.d.), It is essential to use modern technologies and mobile health platform to serve the needs of a large number of patients and enhance care service delivery, provide accessibility of quality care services to the last mile population at grass-root levels (Bhatt et al., 2019, 2020b; Chakraborty et al., 2018). With its capability to reach the last mile and serve the patients, it is crucial to know the factors which influence the medical practitioner/doctors to use it; the hospitals and the care delivery stakeholders are always in a dilemma to start its implementation.
In the pandemic-hit world of a novel coronavirus, where hospitals have become big beds of infection, people avoided going out due to fear of getting infected. Providing essential services like healthcare essentially boosted mHealth and e-health adoption. The Government also enabled technology to deliver healthcare services for all by lowering many policy tariffs. In this challenging situation, the hospitals that focused on and promoted health ushered in a domain of connected healthcare where patients and doctors were in touch with their smartphones and mobile health applications for acute diseases, chronic disorders, and even for the cases of covid-19 positive patients in remote quarantine observations (Bhatt et al., 2020b; Bhatt & Chakraborty, 2021c). However, to enable a patient to use these modern technologies (mHealth), the physicians were the first obstacles, who needed to be convinced to adopt the technology first, as physician adoption of these technologies provided a facilitating condition for patients to adopt the technology.
The number of mobile phones and smartphone users is rapidly increasing globally, including in India. As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report, smartphone users are increasing day by day. India has observed a growth of 419.54% from 2015 to 2021 in smartphone users. On the other side, teledensity and gigabytes used by smartphone users have also increased in the last five years (TRAI data). This implies many opportunities to use smartphone and bandwidth infrastructure for healthcare purposes. India is also seeking a revolution in its digital competencies, and as a result, many angel investors have invested in many different valuable start-ups related to the healthcare industry. DocsApp, 1mg, Mfine, Medbuddy, Practo, and apollo 247 are a few famous names serving the patients' needs by using state-of-the-art technologies where patients and physicians can interact on a digital platform. These apps provide doctor's consultation and a platform for ordering the prescribed medicines, a variety of lab tests prescribed by a physician, tracking of habits, and other features. However, for using these apps on a community level, it is essential that firstly medical practitioners and doctors adopt them (Francis, 2019).
The primary objective of this study is to determine the intrinsic factors enabling physicians to adopt mHealth. They feel motivated and convinced that mHealth and Digitech adoption in healthcare is beneficial for their care delivery. Since convincing the physicians happens to be the primary objective block. Therefore, this study will help get the vital factors to the physicians and hospital managers to go for all-around 360-degree mHealth and digital care adoption. This study preliminary concentrates on focusing on and understanding the inherent factors rather than external factors.