JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The accelerated development of ICTs has made healthcare one of the pioneering fields in the incorporation of these tools. New technologies have been applied; the existing ones have been sophisticated and improved, and the concept of e-Health has expanded These advances and expansion of e-Health, however, do not seem to have served to adapt the supply of services to users’ demand; rather, supply seems to be governed by other variables.

Objective:

The main objective of this work is to review the existing differences between user demands and the supply of e-Health services in Spain and their causes. The aim is to provide information on the level of use of the services, the causes of the variation in demand for these services, which can be useful in correcting existing differences and adapting them to the needs of users.

Methods:

A Survey of Use and Attitudes towards e-Health in Spain was applied by phone to a sample of 1,695 people of legal age, taking into account sociodemographic profile characteristics (sex, age, habitat, educational level). The confidence level was of 95%, and a margin of error of ±2.45 for the whole sample.

Results:

The results obtained show that the online doctor's appointment service is the most used by users: 72.48% have used it at some time and 21.28% say they use it regularly, while other services show significantly lower percentages of use: "managing health cards" (28.04%), "consulting medical history" (20.37%), "managing test results" (20.22%), "communicating with health professionals" (17.80%) and "requesting a change of doctor" (13.76%). Despite this low usage, a large majority of respondents (80%) attach great importance to all the services offered. 16.52% of the users surveyed were willing to make new service requests to the regional websites, with 9.33% of them highlighting services such as "the availability of a complaints and claims mailbox", "the possibility of consulting medical records" and "the availability of more detailed information on medical centres (location, medical directory, waiting lists, etc.)". Other outstanding requests (8.00%) were to simplify the procedures for using certain existing services.

Conclusions:

The data from the survey show that eHealth services are widely known and highly valued by users, but not all are used with the same frequency or intensity. It appears that users find it difficult to suggest new services that might be useful to them in terms of demand for new services that do not currently exist. It would be useful to use qualitative studies to gain a deeper understanding of their currently unmet needs and the possibilities of e-Health. The lack of access to and use of these services and the unmet needs particularly affect the less able, as they have the greatest difficulty in meeting their needs through alternative means.