Adela Mesa and Pedro Martínez‐Monje
interrelated with the use of social networks on the Internet in relation to health?; Why is the population’ s attitude to health a small barrier for the development of healthcare e‐governance, as indicated in the response from the technicians?; What is understood as“ e‐Government in healthcare”?
4. Conclusions
After the analysis of the results obtained from the questionnaire on barriers to electronic government, in general and within the area of healthcare particularly in the Spanish Autonomous Regions, we can extract some of the most significant valuations on the matter.
As regards the technical and design barriers, the perception of the technicians regarding the citizens’ lack of use and knowledge for the e‐services seems to be quite important. This appears to be related to the perception on the lack of preparation / information of the citizens in the handling of the ICT. These deficits in technological skills among the population must be addressed by public authorities promoting literacy programs tailored to different profiles of digital divides. And political authorities should not relegate it only to the proactive initiative of NGOs. In addition, technicians have observed that different levels of government administration( state, regional, and local) hinder the development of eGovernment, and, from our point of view this can be an important fact of the lack of a coordinated solution to the problem of the digital divide. Another important issue is that in addition to the citizenship ´ s limited access to the Internet, we must add that the use of such access becomes a digital divide factor in many cases.
In the block on e‐Government policies, the greatest perception of barriers is found in the question relating to the convergence of different groups of actors( politicians, managers, ICT specialists, etc.). In fact, it is considered the biggest barrier in the block. It is well known that the willingness of political authorities to implement e‐government programs has successfully been the mainstay in these programs for years. This is a structural barrier as politicians change periodically. Only rules and specific plans about it can ensure that the guidelines set have a relative continuity.
Talking about policies, the recent initiatives in e‐healthcare may be rejected by the citizens if they are exclusively associated to welfare budgets cuts. Both Health sector staff and the population have to notice the benefits of ICT to improve the welfare of the citizenry. It is quite significant that 35 per cent of the Internet user population in Spain have ever requested a medical appointment through the Internet( ONTSI, 2012) meanwhile only 62 per cent of the population use regularly the Internet. Other programs as the clinical digital history have other kind of problems, that is, interoperability.
The specific features of the healthcare sector require specific considerations as regards e‐healthcare, some which are shared with other sectors may here have greater weight or relevance as it is a particularly sensitive sector for the population. In later stages of the research we will focus our analysis in this direction.
References
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