Medicina Comunitária e Educação em Saúde

Abstrato

Readiness of Diabetics to Use the Internet and Mobile Services: The Case of a Large City in a Middle-income Country

Jafari J, Moonaghi HK, Ahmady S, Zary N and Masiello I

Objective: To determine the potential of providing health-related services on the Internet or via mobile phones to diabetic patients in a large city in Iran, a middle-income country. Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing worldwide, especially in developing countries, as a consequence of urbanisation, which is associated with risk factors for diabetes such as physical inactivity and high sugar and fat diets. The use of the Internet and mobile services is increasing worldwide. Independent use of the Internet and mobile technologies by patients could be a key step towards self-care management of DM. Methods: A two-part validated questionnaire was completed by patients who attended one of two diabetic clinics for a routine check-up. The first part consisted of 16 demographic-related items. The second part contained 26 items about the specific use of the Internet and mobile services to access information. Results: In total, 407 questionnaires were completed. The results showed that 108 (26.5%) of the respondents had routine access to the Internet, of which 95.4% had routine access to mobile services and 77.8% were positive about using an official Iranian website for medical information. However, 55% of the respondents preferred to obtain health-related information from television, radio, and educational films. Conclusions: The data suggest that the diabetic patients who used the Internet in this study were willing to receive educational material via the Internet. However, many still preferred traditional sources of health-related information. The findings indicated that our future effort in self-care management should focus on early technology adopters to increase the penetration rate of technology in the field of health care.