Early results of user profiles: physicians' opinions on the use of information technology

The role of physicians in today's managed care context is viewed as that of economic partner and clinical decision-maker, operating under the rules of professional autonomy and independence. To a considerable degree, physicians need to feel intrinsically motivated in order to change and adapt to new forms of health care delivery and information management. Today, health information managers use the rapid advances in telecommunications and computing technologies to plan and build vast health information networks, while at the same time receiving little support from systematic research to help understand, segment, and address the range of physicians' concerns and perceptions regarding these systems. This study's design employs a novel combination of qualitative and quantitative methods: first, to identify individual physician opinion profiles, and second, to group these profiles into clusters of similar perceptions. Opinions were obtained from primary care physicians in the Chicago area and resulted in four distinctly different profiles: Early Adopter, Traditional Family Doctor, Hesitant-Defensive Acceptor, and Unwilling-Uneasy Participant.