Title
A new perspective in the promotion of e-health
Abstract
This paper proposes a new model that provides assistance in understanding the reasons why individuals would use new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to perform a healthcare change in their lifestyle. Achieving a lifestyle change by the use of ICT is a multifold issue that can be broadly addressed by analysing, in parallel two dimensions: the individuals' attitude towards their health condition and their approach and readiness to monitor and change their attitude by the use of ICT. Our work has been to conceive and develop a model that explains the different stages the user is at both in terms of the perception of healthcare and of the use of technology to perform any desired or recommended change. In order to place the user at each dimension a set of questionnaires were designed and implemented. These questionnaires assisted us in understanding what personalised information needs to be provided according to the stage the user is at as well as to other variables (such as age, cultural background, etc). The novelty of this model is that it proposes a general framework that may be applied to the conception, design and evaluation of any e-health application. Moreover, it can be applied to different application targets (medical informatics, public health informatics, etc) and to different audiences (healthy individuals, patients, professionals, etc) as it proposes an enhanced user modelling process by taking into account both healthcare behaviour aspects as well as technological issues, which up to this moment, have not been taken into account and may be part of the explanation of e-health uptake failure in the healthcare field. The application of this model promotes the empowerment of the individuals by providing tailored information, as well as guidance, monitoring, through ICT and it will certainly make an impact on health-related behaviour. Besides, it will allow to understand some of the reasons of the success or failure of different e-health platforms. Overall, this model is likely to provide deeper insights into the process of improving e-health so it can meet ongoing individuals' needs and become an increasingly valued part of health care services.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.3233/978-1-58603-647-8-404
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Healthcare behaviour models,e-health acceptance,ubiquitous information
Knowledge management,Medicine
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
124
0926-9630
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.74
1
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Eva del Hoyo-Barbolla1251.91
Rita Kukafka214142.13
María Teresa Arredondo39022.52
Marta Ortega-Portillo451.18