I’m so excited about World Internet Project 2009 Macao (July 8 - 10) where I’m presenting a paper done with Dra. Rita Espanha entitled Health and the Internet: Autonomy of the User.

Abstract:

Information access and distribution are growing and the ways in which this information and knowledge democratisation occurs are many, scattered and diverse. Individual health, and its daily management, never involved as much information as nowadays.

The aims of this paper are: to identify and characterise the role of daily information and communication practices for health individual management in Portugal and to identify and characterise some trends on a global scale of the Internet use for health purpose.

Considering all Internet activities within WIP database 2007, cluster analysis was carried out to define an e-readiness index to the Network Society. Citizens who have more probability to be in worse health status due to their age are those who have also more probability to be less e-readiness or even dropped out of the Internet.

Parallel to the “informed patient” concept, we must consider also in our approaches the “generation divide” and the “e-readiness divide” concepts associated with health.

The World Internet Project (WIP) is a major, international, collaborative project looking at the social, political and economic impact of the Internet and other new technologies. Conceived as the study of the Internet that should have been conducted of television in its early days, the WIP believes that the Internet’s influence will ultimately be far greater than television. Whereas television has mostly been about entertainment, the Internet has the potential to transform how the world plays, works and learns… +info

I’m working on the presentation but after the meeting it will be uploaded. Finally I would like to thank Imma Tubella, Carlos Tabernero and specially Joan Torrent, colleagues from Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) at Open University of Catalonia, for their support to travel to Macao.

Today I have started my day reading [Air-L] blogs on death and dying for agnostics and atheists and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Hi AoIRers!

My father was diagnosed 6 months ago with Stage III esophageal cancer. After one round of radiation and chemotherapy, he recently decided to enter hospice. He’s a retired psychology professor and as a social scientist he’s trying to gather as much information as possible about the process of dying from the personal perspective of an agnostic or atheist. He’s most interested in finding agnostics and atheists facing death who are blogging (or have blogged) about their experiences. I haven’t had much luck identifying blogs that fit this somewhat narrow parameter. He has set up a blog
http://agnosticsfacingdeath.blogspot.com/
in the hopes he can start a conversation with others in similar circumstances.

If you have any suggestions for specific websites, blogs, search terms, etc., please email me off list at sjcoopman@yahoo.com

-Stephanie

Stephanie J. Coopman, Ph.D.
Professor
Communication Studies
Advising Liaison, College of Social Sciences
http://www.sjsu.edu/advising/
Faculty in Residence, Accessible Technology Initiative
http://www.sjsu.edu/cfd/resources/instructional/accessibility.shtml
San Jose State U
San Jose, CA 95192-0112
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/stephanie.coopman/

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Reading this message and the second post entitled Good Day I have realised again the complexity around health and its relationship with moral and beliefs issues and also to what extend the Internet is embedded in everyday life and furthermore death.

I hope the spread of this message could help Stephanie and Bob.

This paper could help us to frame into scientific medial journals the differences between  Utilised ICT physicians and Integrated ICT physicians and also fix into the drivers of the transition from utilization to integration.

Masters, K. (2008). For what purpose and reasons do doctors use the Internet: A systematic review. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 77(1), 4–16.

Objectives: To determine doctors’ reasons for using the Internet, and the factors that influence their usage.
Data sources: A systematic review of 38 studies, from 1994 to 2004, describing surveys of doctors’ Internet usage.
Results: All of the studies were in the developed world, primarily in North America. Approximately 60–70% of doctors have access to the Internet, but in several studies access is more than 90%. Access is steadily increasing. Most Internet activity focuses on email and searching in journals and databases, but there is a very wide range of activities. Professional email with colleagues and patients is low, but increasing. The major factors discouraging usage are time, workload and cost, while too much information, liability issues and lack of skills
also feature as discouraging factors. Factors encouraging use are unclear, but overall patient satisfaction and belief in improved service delivery, time saving and demand from patients are factors. There is a trend that males use the Internet more than females, young more than old, and specialists more than generalists, but these differences are not across the board, and show variations between studies.
Conclusion: In spite of the limitations, it is clear that doctors are highly connected to the Internet, and their professional usage is increasing. Factors encouraging and discouraging usage are more complex than simple connectivity. Usage differences between demographic groups do exist, but are equalising. More and consistent research is required in this area.

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.

On 23rd June I had the pleasure to present some of the results of our research in the Brown Bag Seminar Series at Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) in the Department of Sociology at University of York where I’m as a visiting researcher.

I have to thanks all the people who were there for their questions and comments. Special thanks to Michael Hardey who helps me to improve the statistics labels. Now we have to keep working on some papers using these analysis.

From “Disconnected Citizen to “Networked Citizen”

From “Utilized ICT physicians” to “Integrated ICT Physicians”

Of course, any comment or suggestion will be very welcomed indeed