1Lecturer, Faculty of Commerce, Department of Information Systems, Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe
2Associate Professor School of Computing, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, University of South Africa, South Africa
*Corresponding Author: Prof Alfred Coleman School of Computing, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, University of South Africa, South Africa. Email: colema@unisa.ac.za
Online published on 30 August, 2018.
The value of eHealth is to help reduce costs in healthcare sector while delivering better healthcare to citizens. However, there are enormous challenges and failures to implement these new technologies into daily healthcare practice in Zimbabwe. The main objective of this study was investigate the daily practices of doctors in Zimbabwe and base on the outcome propose a strategic framework for effective utilisation of eHealth tools by medical doctors. The study was guided by a qualitative research approach in conjunction with multiple case studies.
The findings show that eHealth application in Zimbabwe public health institutions is at its infancy. The nine problems that contributed the low adoption of eHealth tools by medical doctors in public hospitals in Zimbabwe were grouped into internal and external factors. In order to solve these nine diagnostics, corresponding guiding policies and coherent actions were formulated.
The study concludes that the proposed framework needs to be implemented in order to solve the low level of eHealth adoption. The contributions of this study are judged to be useful in promoting the adoption of eHealth tools in public health institutions in Zimbabwe and other developing countries in similar context.
Ehealth, new technologies, medical doctors, health care practices
