Perceptions of Telediagnoses Technology in Brazil: A Case of Active Innovation Resistance?

Several articles have focused on the process of innovation acceptance and adoption. Fewer studies have focused on the elements that explain innovation resistance and barriers to technology adoption. This article applies a recent Innovation Resistance Model to measure the attitudes of Brazilian health professionals toward telediagnostics technology. Contrary to what we had expected following a recent backlash from an attempt to modernize telemedicine practices in Brazil by the Federal Council of Medicine, our sample was very receptive to this technology, even though some resistance remains, both in terms of certain functional barriers (complexity, co-dependence, and compatibility), and psychological barriers (social and personal risk, public image, and above all information asymmetries). As a theoretical result, we have validated a scale (based on the model) to measure innovation resistance using the Principal Component Analysis method.