Customer perception of e-health service: availability and awareness

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the present research is to investigate customer perception of e-health service awareness and compare it with e-health service availability in order to increase effectiveness of data sharing. Design/methodology/approach. E-health, as a part of healthcare system, is information and communication technology based services aimed to increase quality of healthcare services and make impact on the overall system performance. The most widely known e-health services are following: on-line patient registration, electronic health records, e-prescriptions, health care data systems and the like. Unfortunately, the majority of e-health services provided in Lithuania are still available only locally. They are more widely spread in big cities and in central health care institutions. E-health services that are more widely spread across the country are few. The on-line sick leave certificate is one of services that are uniform across the country and are fully integrated into the entire e-health system. This service has been operationalised since 2010. The recent four year period of performance should be enough to create sufficient awareness about e-health success among patients and among wider society as well. This particular service was selected for further investigation. Investigation is based on the survey. 1000 respondents throughout Lithuania were inquired with the purpose to analyse awareness of e-health among Lithuanians. This research is a part of a larger scale research in the framework of the project VP1-3.1-ŠMM-07-K-02-029/2013. Statistical analysis was conducted by means of SPSS, WinPepi and Microsoft Excel. Descriptive statistics together with data on the nominal scale and as categorical variables with χ2 test and Fisher test were applied. With the purpose to compare categorical-ordinal data, Kruskal-Wallis test was applied. Only statistically significant data with p ≤ 0,05 were used to draw out conclusions. [...]