Emerald Publishing Limited eHealth: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils, and Future Directions: 15 (Studies in Media and Communications, 15)

This special volume contributes to the rapidly growing body of eHealth research, presenting a selection of multidisciplinary studies on the role and impacts of technology and the Internet in health communication, healthcare delivery, and patient self-management. The use of the Internet and new communication technologies have impacted nearly every aspect of life in recent years. These technologies hold tremendous promise to improve systems of healthcare and enable people to better understand their health and manage their healthcare. However, there are also risks to the use of eHealth technologies. Empirical evidence is urgently needed to examine the use and impacts of eHealth technologies and to inform targeted health communication interventions. Chapters explore both old and new challenges associated with technology-enabled care. These include the persistence of social determinants in shaping Digital Divides in access and use of eHealth technologies, the unintended consequences associated with electronic medical records and pagers on healthcare professionals' ability to control their work time, and how self-tracking and quantification may exacerbate gendered norms of the body and health. Other chapters provide updated information on trends in and predictors of people's trust of health information channels, how people make credibility assessments of online health information, the role of personality traits in perceived benefits in online support group participation, and how online health resources impact people's sense of empowerment and the use of healthcare services. Finally, chapters explore the future potential of eHealth in addressing the needs of underserved communities and guide the creation of new technology-enabled intervention strategies. Review Contributors from medical fields and from communications and media explore the role and impact of the Internet and other technologies on health communications across a broad range of contexts. Among their topics are trust in health information sources and channels then and now: evidence from the Health Information National Trends Survey 2005-13, the impact of health practitioners' use of communication technologies on temporal capital and autonomy, the third digital divide in the health domain: whether Internet use for health purposes is associated with health benefits, who is likely to benefit most from online cancer support communities: the role of personality traits, and developing a graphic text messaging intervention for smoking cessation targeting first-generation Chinese immigrant men: insights from focus group interviews. -- Annotation ©2018 ― (protoview.com) About the Author Timothy M. Hale is the Associate Director of Product Development at Partners HealthCare, Connected Health Innovation (CHI) and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA. Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou is a Program Director in the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) of the Behavioral Research Program (BRP) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA. Shelia R. Cotten is MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University and the Director of the Sparrow/MSU Center for Innovation and Research, USA. Aneka Khilnani is a recent graduate from Santa Clara University with a BS in Public Health Science, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.