Mobile hospital services awareness locator : case of hospitals in Nairobi County

Abstract

Globally, Mobile Hospital Locations is a multi-billion industry, which has been observed to grow at a fast pace. Mobile Hospital Locations is one of the electronic commerce that is widely used by almost everyone to locate hospitals. In Nairobi County, the major hospitals have not been able to deploy Mobile Hospital Locations for their customers at large.We are yet to see the first Mobile Hospital Locations deployment in Nairobi County. What could be the problem? This research paper intended to find out the success factors that can lead to adoption of Mobile Hospital Locations in Nairobi County viewed from both at a management point of view and a client perspective. The paper also sought to find out if there have been other successful models in other parts of the world and if these models could be replicated here in Nairobi County.The research involved development of a Mobile Hospital Locator model application that was used as a proof of concept in this research. It is this application together with a questionnaire and a set of interview questions that data was collected and analysed.From review of literature, it was found that other successful models have been launched by retail giants such as Hospital real-time location system, Wireless indoor positioning systems and health ambulance identifier, which with few modifications to suit the Nairobi county scenario, can be replicated The main factors that could lead to successful adoption are ease of use, usefulness,availability of reliable real-time prices, hospital locations and the ability to compare services and prices of related hospitals. However, poor security, fraud and poor application design are some of the factors that can lead to lack of adoption of such an application.This paper recommends further research into the factors that make customers prefer one hospital to the other to shed more light into other dynamics that may influence introduction of Mobile Hospital Locations strategy.