Title: Gender preferences among electronic healthcare options: choices concerning neonatal care among professionals

Authors: Alan D. Smith, Amber A. Smith

Addresses: Department of Management and Marketing, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA 15219-3099, USA. ' Department of Management and Marketing, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA 15219-3099, USA

Abstract: Technological advancements have migrated from personal-use electronics into the healthcare setting for security enhancements. Within maternity ward and nurseries, technology was seen as one of best way to protect newborns from abduction. Through hypothesis-testing and exploratory analysis, gender biases and extremely high levels of security were found within a web-enabled and professional sample of 200 respondents. As evident in the hypothesis-testing and exploratory aspects of the present study, security of neonatal care is paramount and people are willing to select a healthcare provider based on their reputation in providing technological solutions to the issue of security. For females, they were statistically more concerned than males with the 11 major independent variables that made up the Hospital Security System (HSS) factor-based construct, such as changes in hospital security and creation of software/hardware packages and technology being used to protect infants comforts the expecting patients. Although there were significant differences among gender concerning the degree of support for HSS-related applications, such technology-based systems were on top of the list in the factor analysis as the most important factor in selecting a hospital for expecting parents to give birth.

Keywords: customer relations management; CRM; electronic healthcare; e-healthcare; empirical; neonatal security; hospital security systems; personal health information; gender preferences; infant protection; maternity wards; nurseries.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2009.029222

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2009 Vol.5 No.2, pp.137 - 163

Published online: 10 Nov 2009 *

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