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The COVID-19 pandemic has created a devastating effect on public health. As “social distance” is a highly effective preventive measure of this pandemic, close contact between a patient and physician is strongly discouraged where possible. Consequently, mobile health (mHealth) technology is taking its momentum to fulfil this gap. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to empirically investigate the moderating as well as the direct role of situational constraint and health consciousness in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) constructs to understand the adoption and use behavior of mHealth care services amid pandemic.

Data were collected from existing mHealth users using an online survey questionnaire in Bangladesh. SmartPLS 3.0 and SPSS 23.0 were used for partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

Situational constraint and health consciousness both have strong direct positive effects on both behavioral intention (in all models) and use behavior (in Models 2 and 3). Further, this study revealed that effort expectancy remains insignificant in both direct and interaction effects whereas social influence becomes insignificant in interaction effects from direct significant effect (Models 1 and 2). Besides, the study reported that the relationship between behavioral intention and use behavior is moderated by situational constraint.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first in terms of mHealth empirical investigation considering the current pandemic situation. The incorporation of the situational constraint and health consciousness into the UTAUT model provides a holistic framework to understand the influence of the adoption and use behavior of mHealth amid pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to introduce new tools to develop a more precise and focused bibliometric analysis on the field of digitalization in healthcare management. Furthermore, this study aims to provide an overview of the existing resources in healthcare management and education and other developing interdisciplinary fields.

This work uses bibliometric analysis to conduct a comprehensive review to map the use of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) research models in healthcare academic studies. Bibliometric studies are considered an important tool to evaluate research studies and to gain a comprehensive view of the state of the art.

Although UTAUT dates to 2003, our bibliometric analysis reveals that only since 2016 has the model, together with UTAUT2 (2012), had relevant application in the literature. Nonetheless, studies have shown that UTAUT and UTAUT2 are particularly suitable for understanding the reasons that underlie the adoption and non-adoption choices of eHealth services. Further, this study highlights the lack of a multidisciplinary approach in the implementation of eHealth services. Equally significant is the fact that many studies have focused on the acceptance and the adoption of eHealth services by end users, whereas very few have focused on the level of acceptance of healthcare professionals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of technology acceptance and adoption by using advanced tools that were conceived specifically for this purpose. In addition, the examination was not limited to a certain era and aimed to give a worldwide overview of eHealth service acceptance and adoption.