Costa, Maria Manuela Simões Aparício daCoelho, António Francisco Papoila Magalhães Martins2023-02-062023-02-062023-01-24http://hdl.handle.net/10362/148720Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThe recent technological evolution has hit health care and the available tools for monitoring and interaction between doctors and patients are now countless. Having said that, doctors and the healthcare industry in general tend to be and for good reason, incredibly risk averse. Healthcare professionals tend to rely on proven methods and value personal interaction to ensure personalized care. As with prescription medication or surgery where they are the deciding agent for the choice of treatment, even if not the primary beneficiary, also with telemedicine technologies they have a deciding role. While many studies have been done on healthcare, there is space to learn further what influences a doctor to adopt and endorse a certain technology in their professional context, namely those related to telemedicine. To better understand what can weigh into this decision process I will aim to answer the question: What are the factors influencing the adoption of telemedicine by physicians in Portugal? Data was collected from medical doctors, through a questionnaire (quantitative) and a focus group (qualitative), to study the perceived benefits and constraints that telemedicine technologies may bring, the key adoption and deterrent factors. As an additional objective, it was also evaluated the role covid-19 had on said adoption. The field work was built taking a technology adoption model as a starting point and using a PLS-SEM (Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modelling) methodology to study the variables and validity of the model. This analysis was compounded with the learnings from the focus group. It was found that the perceived benefit or usefulness of telemedicine is the main driver to try and adopt the technology from a physician’s perspective with some influence from ease of use or other facilitating conditions. It is expected that the outcome of this work can be used as an input into the optimization efforts of telemedicine technology development and implementation to maximize its adoption by this professional group and ultimately benefit the patient community.engTelemedicineAdoptionTAMHealthcarePhysiciansMedical DoctorsHealth Care ProfessionalsPLS-SEMPortugalmaster thesis203220358