"When the Time Comes": Exploring Temporal Differences in the Adoption of Medical Innovation

The effects of institutional, organizational, and professional factors on the adoption of medical innovations are widely recognized, but scant empirical evidence for how they jointly affect adoption behaviors over time is available. This study aimed to shed new light on the impact of these factors on the timing of organizations’ decisions to adopt an innovative technology. We collected data on temporal patterns of diffusion of a robotic surgical system among Italian hospital organizations. We adopted a dyadic approach to examine the time elapsed between paired hospitals’ adoption decisions. Negative binomial regression analysis was then performed to test our research hypotheses. The results indicate that professional factors, as well as regional governance and technological policies, significantly predicted the temporal lag in adoption decisions. Our study provides empirical support for the strong effects of professional and institutional characteristics on the temporal aspects of medical innovation diffusion.