Access and Acceptability of Digital Technology Amongst Caregivers/Parents in Government Sector

Excerpt

To the Editor: Digital technology has tremendous potential in delivering health related information to general public. However data regarding accessibility and delivery of health related information through internet is lacking. We evaluated the proportion of pediatric caregivers accessing healthcare information through internet and their comfort level, using a pretested questionnaire [1]. Caregivers, accompanying children attending the Pediatric OPD of a tertiary-care hospital of North India, were interviewed from July 2013 through July 2014 by a single investigator (AA), who was trained before beginning the study. Each household was interviewed only once using a 22 items questionnaire. Ethical approval was obtained from institute’s Ethics committee. The comfort level and openness of the respondents towards acquiring online health information was assessed by 5-point Likert scale. Assuming 40 % internet usage in general population with a precision of 5 %, we required to enrol 960 subjects. We approached 1050 caregivers in Pediatrics OPD, of which 1036 (98.6 %) responded. The respondents predominantly were parents (92 %); in 30–40 y age group (50 %). Only 33 % (N = 345) respondents were using internet. Following factors were associated with internet usage: urban inhabitants [251 (73 %) vs. 332 (48 %), p < 0.001]; Service class [163 (47 %) vs. 123 (18 %), p < 0.001]; graduates and post-graduates [267 (78 %) vs. 120 (17 %), p < 0.001] compared to non-users respectively. Of all internet users, 33 % accessed >1/d, 36 % once daily, 24 % once weekly and rest 7 % occasionally. The internet users used internet for communication (e-mail =89 %), web browsing (75 %), social networking (72 %), news/ music (37 % each), chat/ instant messenger (16 %), shopping (13 %), gaming (11 %) and internet television (3 %). Two-third of the internet users accessed internet on their smartphones. Health information was accessed on internet by one-third respondents. Of all 345 internet users, 95 % were willing to use internet for health information in future. Majority (95 %) believed that such information would be reliable and 72 % were comfortable to access health information through internet. Seventy-six percent expressed willingness to receive discharge summaries online instead of hard copies. To conclude, pediatric caregivers are opening up to access health information through digital technology, however, their blind faith on internet sources as a medium of information was worrisome. …