The Search for the Health and Social Security: Experiences from Consumers Searching for Healthcare Services

Elorm Damalie, Reima Suomi, Pia Blomqvist, Kaisa Ruotsalainen

2020

Abstract

Backgroud and Objective: People use different information services to select their healthcare services. It is important to collect and analyze user feedback from such sites to understand needs of the user and to develop these services. As such information services are usually designed, implemented and maintained by third parties, not the original service deliverers, we shortly discuss the concept of market middlemen. Furthermore, as such services are not easy to use but require a certain level of experience and work from the users, we also shortly review the discussion around eHealth literacy. Study Design/Markets and Methods: Data was collected in year 2017 by the Contact Point for Cross-Border Healthcare through a web-based survey from consumers searching for healthcare services. Some these consumers are users of then Choosehealthcare.fi online service in Finnish Hoitopaikanvalinta.fi website, that now is renamed to EU-healthcare.fi and EU-terveydenhoito.fi in Finnish. Together feedback was collected from 93 respondents. We used thematic qualitative analysis to find themes that the respondents took up when answering the survey. We used pre-analyzed material by Contact Point for Cross-Border Healthcare and Frantic. Results: The results show that the needs of the users are very varied, and information on many different issues are sought for. In general, the respondents found the amount of information to be overwhelming, and it was difficult to find answers to specific questions. More structured information will give users an opportunity to compare services between the different countries.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Damalie E., Suomi R., Blomqvist P. and Ruotsalainen K. (2020). The Search for the Health and Social Security: Experiences from Consumers Searching for Healthcare Services.In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE, ISBN 978-989-758-420-6, pages 103-108. DOI: 10.5220/0009795901030108

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ict4awe20,
author={Elorm Damalie and Reima Suomi and Pia Blomqvist and Kaisa Ruotsalainen},
title={The Search for the Health and Social Security: Experiences from Consumers Searching for Healthcare Services},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE,},
year={2020},
pages={103-108},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009795901030108},
isbn={978-989-758-420-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE,
TI - The Search for the Health and Social Security: Experiences from Consumers Searching for Healthcare Services
SN - 978-989-758-420-6
AU - Damalie E.
AU - Suomi R.
AU - Blomqvist P.
AU - Ruotsalainen K.
PY - 2020
SP - 103
EP - 108
DO - 10.5220/0009795901030108