Acceptability, Benefits, and Barriers of Electronic Health Record (eHR) Radiology Image Sharing: A Mixed-Method Study

Background: The electronic Health Record (eHR) Radiology Image Sharing system allowed radiology data upload and sharing to enhance healthcare services. This research aims to examine the acceptability, perceived benefits, barriers of the system.Methods: Physicians who were involved in clinical practice and would potentially adopt the system were recruited. Descriptive variables included age, gender, experience of clinical exposure, and practice type. Correlations between predictors and acceptability and perceived benefits) were examined using linear and logistic regression analyses. In-depth interviews were conducted to examine the acceptability, perceived benefits, barriers and potential areas for improvement of the system among physicians and healthcare recipients.Results: A total of 288 surveys and 10 interviews were included. A high level of user satisfaction (78.5%) has been reported. It has been suggested that the system was able to overcome limitations of the traditional logistics (87.2%), and to improve patients’ experience of healthcare (82.3%). System quality (aOR = 4.307, 95% CI: 1.815-10.223, p =0.001) were significant factors associated with the acceptability. Physicians were satisficed as the system helped to track previous record of patients and to achieve better patient management. Patient had positive attitude towards the system, which encouraged them to join and use the system when choosing radiology centres in the future.Implications: Our findings have pointed out the acceptability, perceived benefits, perceived barriers and potential improvements of the system. It was recommended to increase public advertising and to relax access permission in order to enhance public understanding and to improve clinical decision-making in the future. A larger population sample size could be targeted for future research in order to generate more comprehensive outcomes.Funding Information: The study was funded by Hospital Authority of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Ref.: TH2116687).Declaration of Interests: ET, CSKC, WMW, and NTC are employees of the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest.Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the Survey and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (SBRE-21-0591).