The Digital Paradox: Assessing the Impact of Health Information Systems (HIS) on Cognitive Load, Patient Interaction, and Work-Life Integration Among Kirinyaga's Medical Practitioners

Abstract

The effect of Health Information System (HIS) adoption strategies on the performance of medical practitioners in Level 4 and Level 5 public hospitals of Kirinyaga County, Kenya, was investigated. Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, four dimensions of HIS were used: system usability, administrative screen time demands, IT infrastructure stability, and digital work-life boundaries. The cross-sectional approach was used, and a stratified random sampling of 272 practitioners was made from a target population of 990. The data collected from 166 valid responses were analyzed descriptively and with multiple regression analysis (SPSSv26). The four dimensions explained 77.6% of the variance in practitioner performance in the results. The most consistent individual predictor was IT infrastructure stability, followed by system usability, administrative screen-time demands, and digital work-life boundaries. The significance of all the null hypotheses was taken as < 0.001. It was found that the adoption of HIS is a “digital paradox” in Kirinyaga County: technologies that were meant to enhance performance can hinder performance when not implemented correctly. The need for emphasis on priority investment in IT infrastructure, systematic usability audits, documentation redesign, and formal digital disconnection policies.