Articles

Opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 within the health care systems: an empirical exploration

June 25, 2009

I have finished to check the proof of my article entitled Opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 within the health care systems: an empirical exploration for Informatics for Health and Social Care (An International Journal of Informatics in Health Care).

Here goes the abstract:

The Internet has become one of the main drivers of e-health. Whilst its impact and potential is being analysed, the Web 2.0 phenomenon has reached the health field and has emerged as a buzzword that people use to describe a wide range of online activities and applications. The aims of this article are: to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Web 2.0 within the health care system and to identify the gap between the potential of these online activities and applications and the empirical data. The analysis is based on: online surveys to physicians, nurses, pharmacist and patient support groups; static web shot analysis of 1240 web pages and exploration of the most popular Web 2.0 initiatives. The empirical results contrast with the Web 2.0 trends identified. Whereas the main characteristic of the Web 2.0 is the opportunity for social interaction, the health care system at large could currently be characterised by: a lack of interactive communication technologies available on the Internet; a lack of professional production of health care information on the Internet, and a lack of interaction between these professionals and patients on the Internet. These results reveal a scenario away from 2.0 trends.

The article has been done with Miquel Angel Mayer and Joan Torrent, colleagues from Interdisciplinary Research Group on ICTs (i2TIC), and will be published on September 2009.