Beyond TAM and UTAUT: Future directions for HIT implementation research

[Display omitted] •This article discusses criticism of two widely used models of HIT implementation.•Much of his criticism has been expressed before in Management Information Systems.•We call researchers to adopt or develop other approaches to study HIT implementation.•Alternative directions should focus on value-adding use and understanding complexity.•These approaches should also account for multiple user perspectives and temporality. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) have been used widely in studies of health information technology (HIT) implementation. However, TAM and UTAUT have also been criticized for being overly simplistic (TAM) and for taking a narrow perspective, which focuses only on individual adopters’ beliefs, perceptions and usage intention. Furthermore, with thousands of studies using these theories, their contribution to knowledge has reached a plateau. In this commentary, we discuss some of the criticism of TAM and UTAUT, and argue that biomedical informatics research would benefit from shifting attention from these theories to multi-dimensional approaches that can better capture the complexity of issues surrounding implementation and use of HIT. We propose a number of future undertakings which, in our opinion, are more likely to move the field forward.