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|Title: ||Internet, salud y sociedad : análisis de los usos de Internet relacionados con la salud en Catalunya|
|Authors: ||Lupiáñez Villanueva, Francisco|
|Director: ||Castells Oliván, Manuel|
|Other: ||Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)|
|Issue Date: ||23-Jan-2009|
|Publisher: ||Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)|
|Type: ||Doctoral Thesis|
|Abstract: ||All the actors implied in healthcare systems are facing the rise of the Network Society; a society whose social structure is made up of networks powered by microelectronic-based information and communication technologies, and a new technological paradigm: Informationalism, based on the augmentation of the human capacity for information processing and communication made possible by the revolution in microelectronics, software, and genetic engineering.
In this broad context, e-health has emerged as a broad field which involves the relationship between the current social structure and the new technological paradigm within the healthcare systems. Furthermore, the Internet has become one of the drivers of e-health and could be considered as one of the main resources for health information; as a medium for interaction; as a tool for healthcare delivery and public health. Those conceptions reveal a tremendous potential for improving the quality and efficiency of the healthcare system; redefining health, medicine and the body; transforming the relationship among healthcare agents, and suggest a new medical cosmology called e-scaped medicine.
Bearing in mind these changes, the aims of the research were:
- Identify and characterize the presence of the actors of the Catalonian healthcare system in the Internet.
- Identify, characterize and explain the determinants of the use and social practices that the principal actors of the healthcare system carry out through ICT, specifically that of the Internet
To reach these objectives, the follow research questions were considered:
- What type of quality information and applications related with Health are offered on the Internet?
- How can the presence of the healthcare system's actors on the Internet be characterized?
- Which are the main barriers and incentives of patient support groups for Internet use?
- What are the ICT uses of the citizens with regard to health and how can they be characterized?
- What are the consequences of citizen ICT use, specifically that of the Internet, regarding the management of their health and the relationship with their healthcare professionals?
- What are the determinants (technological and non-technological) of the demand of healthcare services by citizens via the Internet?
- What are the uses of ICT, especially the Internet, by healthcare professionals and how can they be characterized?
- What are the determinants (technological and non-technological) of the uses of the Internet by health care professionals (Physicians, Nurses and Pharmacist)?
Empirical data to answer these questions are based on telephone survey to population, online surveys to physicians, nurses, pharmacists and patient support groups and on a static snapshot analysis of health related webs.
And the general hypothesis: The interaction between social structure, the increase of information flow and ICT causes a transformation in social practices and in the behaviour of the actors of the healthcare system|
|Appears in Collections:||Doctoral Thesis|
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