Digital Natives and eHealth

The Spanish Health Minister has published a press release talking about its collaboration with Microsoft to launch Robot Robin, a Windows Live Messenger Assistant that helps young people through the Messenger to resolve doubts about health issues related with sex, pregnancy and alcoholic drinks. It is said that people can add Robin to the personal contact list and interact with him taking into account legal, privacy and security issues.

This initiative points out some trends detected in relation with health and the Internet as Innovative Health Technology:

• The importance of the private sector and the interest of the big companies like Microsoft and Google to get into this huge market.
• The importance of analyze the supply and the demand side, in this case digital natives as a heavy Internet users (demand) and the Internet as a tool to reach this audience, taking into account the possible digital divide.
• The importance of the understanding about how people use existing technologies everyday to develop new uses.