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The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors influencing the adoption decision of patients towards digital consultation in India with gender as a moderating variable. This study is based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) framework for examining the factors influencing adoption decisions for digital consultation and to what extent this leads to continuous usage intention.

Based on the UTAUT2 framework, this study proposed a set of hypotheses that were tested using structural equation modeling. This study was based on primary data collected from 462 sample respondents using the judgemental sampling method who had experience of using digital health consultation in India.

Findings of this study revealed significant and positive causation in the behavioural intention (BI) of a patient to adopt digital health consultation arising out of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition and price value; however, habit is insignificantly associated with the same. Furthermore, the results of this study also revealed that the BI of a patient towards digital health consultation is significantly moderated by their gender.

This study conceptually strengthens the present body of literature on the adoption behaviour by contributing certain new dimensions in the context of digital health consultations and will also help policymakers and service providers in crafting their strategy for promoting the adoption of digital health consultation.

This research explores the factors that influence patients' willingness to seek digital health advice in developing countries like India by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) with perceived risk (PR) and trust.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses proposed for this study. The primary data for this study were acquired from 578 respondents using a judgmental sampling procedure.

Results of this investigation reflected a positive and significant connexion of the intention of a patient towards e-health consultation with effort expectancy (EE), performance expectancy (PE), trust and social influence (SI); conversely, factors like facilitating condition (FC) and PR are not significantly connected with the same.

The findings of this study will not only add to the existing literature on the behavioral intention (BI) by introducing new dimensions in the context of digital health consultation, but they will also aid service providers in developing strategies to encourage the use of e-health consultation services in emerging economies such as India.

The recent pandemic of COVID-19 has posed challenges for delivering essential and desirable health-care services for the masses. Digital health-care services initiated by several hospitals and health practitioners promise efficient and safe health care in the new normal post-COVID era but need a supportive enabling ecosystem. Therefore, this study aims toward identifying and modeling the key enabling factors for digital health-care services.

A total of nine factors were identified from the literature review and verified by the domain experts which can enable the wider acceptance of digital health-care services. The identified factors were then modeled with the help of the total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach and fuzzy Matrices d’Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) and a meaningful contextual relationship were developed for the factors.

This study reflects that the trust of patients is required for the acceptance of digital health care. Quality of patient care and affordability cum accessibility of online services will define mass engagement. Hospital staff resilience, hospital care service capacity, strategic partnerships and collaborations supported by technology and regulatory structure are the major factors defining the enabling ecosystem.

This study has its uniqueness in the way the TISM approach and fuzzy MICMAC are used for modeling the enabling factors toward growth and acceptance of digital health-care services in the days to come in developing nations. The focus of this study can be considered as relevant for the study interested in investigating the role of cognitive dimensions in influencing actors’ behaviors and decisions.

This study aims to investigate the user’s behavior and intention to continue using e-health services by analyzing the factors influencing their decision. The stimuli–organism–behavior–consequence (SOBC) framework was used to assess how the risks and benefits of e-health influence both behavioral intention (BI) and continued use.

The hypotheses proposed for this study were tested with partial least square-based structural equation modeling. This study relied on the primary data collected from 572 respondents using convenient sampling.

This study examined the SOBC model’s four phases’ with the help of eight constructs. The conceptual model allowed the authors to examine 10 relationships to measure e-health adoption behavior in emerging nations like India. This study found that convenience, perceived risk and facilitating conditions are positively related to the effort and performance expectancy (PE) associated with e-health consultation. Only social influence is unrelated. This study also found a positive and substantial relationship between BI, effort and PE.

The study uses the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the SOBC paradigm to determine the factors influencing users’ intentions to use e-health. In addition to bringing new aspects to the existing literature on technology adoption and e-health consultation, the results of this study will aid e-health service providers in formulating strategies to promote the usage of e-health in emerging economies like India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate physicians’ perceptions of e-consultation adoption, which has the potential to bridge existing gaps in the current health-care system, using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) framework.

The judgemental sampling method was embraced to collect primary data from 337 physicians from Delhi-National Capital Region who had experience with e-consultation. A number of hypotheses was developed and tested using structural equation model based on UTAUT2.

The study’s findings revealed an affirmative and significant relation between a physician’s intention to embrace e-consultation and facilitating conditions, effort expectancy, social influence and performance expectancy; however, habit and experience are not significantly linked to it.

This study will not only add to the existing body of knowledge about e-consultation adoption, but it will also assist electronic health service providers in devising strategies to encourage the usage of e-consultation services in emerging economies such as India where people are deprived of the right to access better health care due to lack of physical infrastructure.

The ubiquity of the internet has extended immense informational power to patients around the world who previously had abysmal knowledge about the disease they are suffering from. With a large amount of information in their hands, these educated and well-informed patients are cultivating deeper relationships and engagement with their physicians through meaningful interactions. This study aims to investigate the influence of patients’ internet usage and their interactions on their intentions to revisit and foster relationships with their physicians.

A survey-based questionnaire was administered at four government hospitals in Pune, involving a sample size of 400. The study intends to use structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine the hypothesized relationships identified within the research analysis.

The findings of this study indicate that patients report higher levels of satisfaction and intention to revisit when they have a strong interaction with their physician.

This study provides valuable inputs to the hospital authorities and health-care-related policy makers. This study also contributes to the overall body of literature on health care information system, behavioural aspects of patients and doctors as well as other health-care-related staffs in hospitals.

The study adds values to the overall body of literature for both hospital information system, patient interaction and health care policy. To date, no research has examined the association between patient–physician interactions conducted through internet channels and subsequent behavioural intentions. Moreover, the study investigates the behavioural aspects of patients and health-care staffs, which adds value towards the body of knowledge in the extant literature.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge about the use of online communication between patients and health-care professionals in public health care. The study explores digital divide gaps and the impacts of online communication on the overall costs of health care.

This study focuses on online health care in Denmark. The authors rely on population data from 3,500 e-visits (e-mail consultations) between patients and general practitioners (GPs) from 2009 to 2015. Additionally, they include survey data on the use of the internet to search for health-related information.

The analysis of the Danish data reveals a rapid uptake in the use of the internet to search for health-related information and a three-fold increase in e-visits from 2009 to 2015. The results show that the digital divide gaps exist also in the online health-care communication. Further, the study findings suggest that enforced supply of online communication between GPs and patients does not alleviate the costs. Rather, the number of visits to GPs has not been decreased significantly and health-care costs showing a marginal increase.

Further data should be collected and analyzed to explore the impacts of other institutional factors and population cohort on the digital divide and healthcare costs. Also, it is difficult to estimate whether the increased use of online health care in the long run lead to lowering overall health-care costs. While the internal validity of the study is high due to the use of population data, the external validity is lower as the study results are based on the data collected in Denmark only.

The study offers important input for practice. First, leaders in government might reconsider how they can control the health-care costs when opening online channels for communication between patients and doctors. Second, concerns about digital divide issues remains, but the study suggests that the uptake of e-visits does not widen the socio-economic, gender or age gaps. For health policy concern, this is encouraging news to lead to an increasing push of online communication.

The dynamics of online health-care communication may lead to mixed results and unexpected impacts on overall health-care costs.

The paper offers new insights in the impacts of mandatory supply of digital services. The Danish push-strategy has led to an enforced supply of e-visits and a rapid growing use of the online health care without widening digital divide but at the risk of potential increasing the overall costs.

Humanized digital solutions that provide better access, understanding and use of health services enable better decisions and better patient’s experience focused on humanization of care. This translates into better health literacy in the digital area.

Currently health care is inseparable from digital health, and this evidence was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this analysis, a cross-sectional study was carried out, with 335 valid answers in a quantitative and qualitative research to evaluate the opinion of the respondents regarding their digital health use and the means used, as well as the perception of emotions generated before and during the pandemic. A qualitative content analysis was also performed on the open question about the future of health.

The results showed a humanization in digital is essential and that it is necessary to prioritize the human relationship and find the meaning of space, communication and proximity of health face-to-face, respecting as differences.

This chapter will also propose the presentation of challenges and results from the application of health literacy on patient empowerment in the health system, based on humanized digital solutions.

The importance of champion leaders including tech-savvy leaders to digital government has been highlighted in the literature. Meanwhile, what was in the authors’ interest to explore was the role of business-savvy leaders or non-governmental digital champions as units of analysis, those who mobilized people's interest in digitalization and bypassed governmental barriers through this popular mobilization. They could be considered policy entrepreneurs for understanding policy change in the digitalization of the health sector. This study sought to shed light on the barriers and drivers of digital health in Iran.

The researchers conducted interviews with actors of digital health businesses in Iran, including the Health Information Technology Center affiliated to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) administrative body and authorities, private companies active in digital health and health service providers. The purposive sampling method was applied, and 15 experts with relevant and valuable experiences as well as maximum variation to obtain representativeness and rich data were interviewed. Trustworthiness criteria were also used to assure the quality of the results. The data were analyzed based on directed content analysis using the MAXQDA10 software.

It was found out how popular diffusion was effective to overcome barriers to health digitalization. Access to the internet and diffusion of information technology helped the net-enabled businesses to connect directly to people and provide services to them. Diffusion of these services forced the public sector to adjust itself, and thus MOHME banned digital consultation services because of the so-called “insecure and unknown physicians”, following the increased popularity of digital services diffusion, but they were not able to resist popular diffusion of new technology. Hence, it was allowed to work. The main barriers to telemedicine spreading in Iran have been divided into five main categories including government incapacity for digital health governance, conflict of interest, professional obligations for information transparency, protection of patients' rights and data security and privacy.

As a game changer in digital health governance in Iran, popular diffusion will determine the future of digital health. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first ones to explore digital health governance in relation to the private digital health business in Iran with a public policy approach.