Search results

This study aims to examine the volume of ehealth literacy documents during 2006–2022, and the nature of citation of ehealth documents by country, organizations, sources and authors.

The study adopted a bibliometric approach. Bibliographic data was collected on citation of ehealth documents by country, organizations, sources and authors from Scopus and mapped and visualized the citations using VosViewer.

A total of 1,176 documents were produced during 2006–2022, indicating a high rate of document production in this sub-discipline. Among the 102 countries that contributed documents on the subject, 58 qualified for the analysis. The USA had the highest number of cited documents on eHealth literacy, followed by Canada and Australia. The average publication year for the USA was 2018, with 348 publications and an average of 24.12 citations. Canada had a high average citation count of 44.69. Furthermore, the document examined citations by organizations.

The research implications of the study suggest that eHealth literacy is an actively growing field of research, with a substantial impact on the academic community, and researchers should focus on collaboration with high-impact institutions and journals to increase the visibility and recognition of their work, while also paying attention to the need for more research representation from African countries.

The study’s findings indicate a high rate of document production and growing interest in eHealth literacy research, with the USA leading in the number of cited documents followed by Canada, while Canadian eHealth literacy research receives relatively higher citation rates on average than the USA.

The study’s originality lies in its examination of citation patterns and global contributions to eHealth literacy literature, offering valuable insights for researchers. It identifies key authors, high-impact journals and institutions, providing valuable guidance for collaboration. The research highlights a growing interest in eHealth literacy, underscoring its potential impact on public health and digital health interventions.

This paper aims to examine the global pattern of growth and development of eHealth research based on publication headcount, and analysis of the characteristics, of the keywords used by authors and indexers to represent their research content during 1945–2019.

This study adopted a bibliometric research design and a quantitative approach. The source of the data was Elsevier’s Scopus database. The search query involved multiple search terms because researchers’ choice of keywords varies very significantly. The search for eHealth research publications was limited to conference papers and research articles published before 2020.

eHealth originated in the late 1990s, but it has become an envelope term for describing much older terms such as telemedicine, and its variants that originated much earlier. The keywords were spread through the 27 Scopus Subject Areas, with medicine (44.04%), engineering (12.84%) and computer science (11.47%) leading, while by Scopus All Science Journal Classification Health Sciences accounted for 55.83% of the keywords. Physical sciences followed with 30.62%. The classifications social sciences and life sciences made only single-digit contributions. eHealth is about meeting health needs, but the work of engineers and computer scientists is very outstanding in achieving this goal.

This study demonstrates that eHealth is an unexplored aspect of health literature and highlights the nature of the accumulated literature in the area. It further demonstrates that eHealth is a multidisciplinary area that is attractive to researchers from all disciplines because of its sensitive focus on health, and therefore requires pooling and integration of human resources and expertise, methods and approaches.

This study aims to examine the eHealth literacy level among online health consumers (OHC) in Jordan and identified variables predicting their eHealth literacy level as well.

A quantitative study was conducted to achieve the study objectives. A purposeful sample of 262 OHC completed an electronic version of the eHealth literacy scale (eHEALS). eHEALS is the most cited scale in the literature, which includes eight items (measured on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree).

Results showed that OHC in Jordan had a moderate level of overall eHealth literacy. Specifically, the eHEALS formed two conceptually sound factors. Gender, occupation, perceived usefulness and perceived importance of the internet, and more frequent online health information seeking were significant positive predictors of overall eHealth literacy and/or its two identified dimensions.

This study represents a humble contribution to the field. Several recommendations were suggested to maintain and improve eHealth literacy among OHC in Jordan.

The internet has changed the landscape of health information. There is an increase in the provision and availability of health information to all users. OHC should be skillful in locating, using and evaluating online health information. Although many researchers have increasingly studied the concept of eHealth literacy among various groups in the past decade, little research has been devoted to focus on eHealth literacy among OHC, particularly in Jordan.

In a competitive environment, eHealth small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) barriers to survival differ from those of large enterprises. Empirical research on barriers to eHealth SMEs in less prosperous areas has been largely neglected. This study fills this gap by employing an integrated approach to analyze barriers to the development of eHealth SMEs. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

The authors collected data through semi-structured interviews and conducted thematic analysis to identify 16 barriers, which were used as inputs into total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to build interrelationships among them and identify key barriers. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) was then applied validate the TISM model and classify the 16 barriers into four categories.

This study makes significant contributions to theory by identifying new barriers and their interrelationships, distinguishing key barriers and classifying the barriers into four categories. The authors identify that transcultural problems are the key barrier and deserve particular attention. eHealth SMEs originating from regions with cultural value orientations, such as hierarchy and embeddedness, that differ from the UK’s affective autonomy orientation should strengthen their transcultural awareness when seeking to expand into UK markets.

By employing an integrated approach to analyze barriers that impede the development of eHealth SMEs in a less prosperous area of the UK, this study raises entrepreneurs’ awareness of running businesses in places with different cultural value orientations.

Telemedicine has been advancing for decades and is more indispensable than ever in this unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic. As shown, eHealth appears to be effective for routine management of chronic conditions that require extensive and repeated interactions with healthcare professionals, as well as the monitoring of symptoms and diagnostics. Yet much needs to be done to alleviate digital inequalities that stand in the way of making the benefits of eHealth accessible to all. The purpose of this paper is to explore the recent shift in healthcare delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic towards telemedicine in healthcare delivery and show how this rapid shift is leaving behind those without digital resources and exacerbating inequalities along many axes.

Because the digitally disadvantaged are less likely to use eHealth services, they bear greater risks during the pandemic to meet ongoing medical care needs. This holds true for both medical conditions necessitating lifelong care and conditions of particular urgency such as pregnancy. For this reason, the authors examine two case studies that exemplify the implications of differential access to eHealth: the case of chronic care diseases such as diabetes requiring ongoing care and the case of time-sensitive health conditions such as pregnancy that may be compromised by gaps in continuous care.

Not only are the digitally disadvantaged more likely to belong to populations experiencing greater risk – including age and economic class – but they are less likely to use eHealth services and thereby bear greater risks during the pandemic to meet ongoing medical care needs during the pandemic.

At the time of writing, almost 20% of Americans have been unable to obtain medical prescriptions or needed medical care unrelated to the virus. In light of the potential of telemedicine, this does not need to be the case. These social inequalities take on particular significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In light of the COVID-19 virus, ongoing medical care requires exposure to risks that can be successfully managed by digital communications and eHealth advances. However, the benefits of eHealth are far less likely to accrue to the digitally disadvantaged.

Marketers and health care providers alike have been actively using the internet to provide information and market a wide variety of health care services and products. This study aims to address consumer's perceptions regarding the quality and ethics of eHealth care web sites.

Using a national random sample of 1,227 respondents, this study identifies online health care information seekers and explores the type of information they seek, their perceptions of eHealth web site quality and ethics, and eHealth care purchases.

The results indicate that while WebMD currently dominates the eHealth care market, the future for niche eHealth care web sites appears promising as consumers' perceptions of eHealth care web site quality and ethical behaviors improve.

Using quality dimensions identified by trade associations, it appears consumers believe useful and accurate healthcare information can be found online, which suggests the potential for developing a trusting relationship. In addition, it appears the development of ethical codes for eHealth web sites is having an affect on consumers' perceptions.

Healthcare information is now available online 24 hours a day and, approximately, 63 percent of physicians use the internet in their practice. But, how do consumers seek health information online? And do consumers perceive these online web sites to be ethical? The current study is unique in its focus on examining eHealth code of ethics using guidelines from several prominent online eHealth ethics organizations.

Considering both online and offline service scenarios, this study aims to explore the factors affecting doctors' intention to offer consulting services in eHealth and compare the factors between the free- and paid-service doctors. The theory of reasoned action and social exchange theory are integrated to develop the research model that conceptualizes the role of extrinsic motivations, intrinsic motivations, costs, and attitudes in doctors' behavioral intentions.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was leveraged to analyze 326 valid sample data. To provide robust results, three non-parametric multigroup analysis (MGA) methods, including the PLS-MGA, confidence set, and permutation test approaches, were applied to detect the potential heterogeneity between the free- and paid-service doctors.

The results with overall samples reveal that anticipated rewards, anticipated associations, anticipated contribution, and perceived fee are all positively related to attitude, which in turn positively influences behavioral intention, and that perceived fee positively moderates the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention. Attitude's full mediation is also confirmed. However, results vary between the two groups of doctors. The three MGA approaches return relatively convergent results, indicating that the effects of anticipated associations and perceived fee on attitude are significantly larger for the paid-service doctors, while that of anticipated rewards is found to be significantly larger for the free-service doctors.

eHealth, as a potential contactless alternative to face-to-face diagnoses, has recently attracted widespread attention, especially during the continued spread of COVID-19. Most existing studies have neglected the underlying heterogeneity between free- and paid-service doctors regarding their motivations to engage in online healthcare activities. This study advances the understanding of doctors' participation in eHealth by emphasizing their motivations derived from both online and offline service scenarios and comparing the differences between free- and paid-service doctors. Besides, horizontally comparing the results by applying diverse MGA approaches enriches empirical evidence for the selection of MGA approaches in PLS-SEM.

This study aims to understand the eHealth literacy skills of chronic patients and to explore the relations, patterns between eHealth literacy skills and different factors such as demographics, search strategies and health information sources and to explain their effects on eHealth literacy in Turkey in Izmir in COVID-19 outbreak.

A quantitative method was used in the study including a questionnaire. A total of 604 chronic patients responded to the questionnaire who applied the five popularly identified hospitals in Izmir in Turkey. CHAID analysis method was implemented to explore the strongest correlation between eHealth literacy and independent variables.

Using different social media types were correlated with patients’ eHealth literacy scores. Using Facebook, Twitter were the supportive predictors for the eHealth literacy scores. However, digital literacy was highly important for eHealth literacy.

This study shows that the social media channels which provides much more information such as Facebook and Twitter for the chronic patient. This could be beneficial for the eHealth tools and social media content developers in terms of the supply of health information. Moreover, the study gives ideas about the effect of digital literacy and the importance of health information provided.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the transferability of ICT‐solutions for providing support information services from eHealth to eMaintenance.

The applied research approach takes the form of a single‐case study supported by a literature study. Empirical data were collected through documents, observations and interviews. The conclusions of the study were verified by key informants.

The study indicates some major problems that have to be overcome when implementing support information services using an ICT‐solution (e.g. to manage heterogeneous organizations; manage heterogeneous eService‐environments; and enable context and situation awareness in eServices). Further, the study has identified and graded some solutions, which address these problems and are transferable from eHealth to eMaintenance.

The studied case is in the forefront of eHealth solutions and can therefore act as a guidance for those involved at different stages of eHealth implementation. At the same time, eHealth is an application domain with stringent safety and security requirements, which makes the findings valuable for persons involved in support information services related to complex and critical technical systems, e.g. aircraft systems.

The paper reports on experiences from an actual eHealth solution and not just about the concept of eHealth. Hence, it has implications for both practitioners and researchers.

This paper aims to investigate the eHealth ecosystem’s evolution during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its effects on the progression of care for patients with chronic cardiovascular disease.

To attain the aim of the study, this study chose to adopt a qualitative method that matches the complexity of the issue. The study was conducted in a real context through 44 face-to-face semi-structured interviews of key informants at different levels of the Italian eHealth service ecosystem, via Microsoft Teams. The interviews were carried out from June 2020 to January 2021. In this research, we adopted an abductive approach that enabled a process where the theoretical framework and the data analysis evolved at the same time.

The study results were used to develop a conceptual framework that considers the key factors enabling and constraining the evolutionary process of the eHealth service ecosystem. In particular, the drivers that emerged from the study were actor role empowerment, actor–network engagement and resource reconfiguration while the inhibitors were inter- and intra-actor misalignment, resource myopia and the platformisation gap. The findings also revealed the pivotal role of the meso level in the development of the eHealth service ecosystem, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

By adopting a service ecosystem perspective, this paper contributes, at both a theoretical and a managerial level, to a better understanding of the dynamics related to the diffusion of eHealth. The study identifies the main issues that researchers, managers and policymakers should address to support the evolution of the eHealth service ecosystem, with particular regard to chronic cardiovascular disease.