Background: The internet is a powerful worldwide communication medium that provides its users with immediate information irrespective of their location, culture, language and time. E-health service will have a great impact in reducing the costs of health care, increasing satisfaction of patients and health professionals, and minimizing the burden on health facilities. Objective: This study aims to determine the proportion of patients who obtain health-related information through the internet as well as factors that could affect using the internet for seeking health information. Subjects and methods: This study was conducted in six general hospitals in Kuwait. A cross-sectional study was adopted to determine the proportion of patients who obtain health-related information through the internet. It was followed by a case-control study to determine factors that could be associated with online search of health information. A questionnaire was used which included data related to sociodemographic characteristics, clinical history and computer experience. The final analysis included 220 participants. Results: The majority of participants (93.2%) mentioned that they have used the internet for one or more purposes. Only 129 participants (62.9%) used the internet for obtaining health related information. All studied socio-demographic factors, except age and marital state, and computer skills variables had significant effect on on-line search for health information. After adjustment for confounding, only gender, nationality, level of education, and using computer at work were proved to be significant determinants of the outcome of interest. Conclusion: It is important to close the gap in health literacy and increase the use of health information technology to support patient self-management. The creation of an eHealth-literate population should be a priority in Kuwaiti public health policy.

Background:The nature and functions of e-health services are expanding rapidly and have the potential of not only improving health, but also to reduce health care costs, enhance scientific understanding of health issues, increase equity of health care, and improve communication between health care providers and patients. Objectives: The aim of the present study is to highlight e-health knowledge, attitude and practice among health care providers in Kuwait. Methods: This study was carried out in the 6 general hospitals during 2015 -2016. 438 health care workers who agreed to participate in the study were asked to fill a predesigned questionnaire that included information regarding sociodemographic characteristics, computer and internet experience as well as knowledge, attitude and practice regarding ehealth. Results: 99.5% of health care participants are users of the internet, 98.2% of them used it for seeking health information. Their e-health attitude percentage score (68.8 ± 10.7) was higher than both knowledge (58.9 ± 24.2) and practice (59.2 ± 20.3) scores. Conclusion: There is a gap between participants' attitude which was generally positive on one side and their knowledge and practice of e-health that were generally moderate on the other side.

Background:E-health refers to internet-based health care and information delivery and seeks to improvehealth service locally, regionally and worldwide. Health care providers must be equipped with the necessary knowledge, training and experience. We developed a questionnaire to obtain information from the physicians and nurses on various aspects of e-health.Objectives:The aim of this study was to test the reliability and validity of this questionnaire to evaluate knowledge,attitude and practice of physicians and nurses towards e-health.Methods: This study was carried out in Al-Sabah general hospital on 22 physicians and 20 nurses who were asked to complete a self-administered close-ended questionnaire that included 3 main aspects relevant to e-health, namely Knowledge, attitude, and practice. Each domain consisted of a number of questions (items). Test-retest reliability was tested by Spearman's correlation coefficients. To evaluate for internal consistency, parity co-variances were used to estimate Cronbach' alpha.Discrimination between participant groups (physicians and nurses) was tested by Mann-Whitney test. Spearman's correlation was utilized to test the correlations between different domains to evaluate the convergent validity.Results: Test re-test reliability of the questionnaire revealed that all scales were reliable, with significant strong correlation for overall knowledge score (r = 0.89), and overall attitude score (r = 0.80) and intermediate significant correlation for practice score (r = 0.46). Testing the internal consistency revealed that coefficients of Cronbach'sα were ≥ 0.80 for all domains except for items of participants' attitude towards themselves (0.77) and practice (0.74).Overall, the scales of the questionnaire could discriminate between physicians and nurses with higher scores among physicians than nurses. Within each studied aspect, the scores of different domains in the questionnaire were positively correlated with each other significantly. Conclusion:The questionnaire was reliable and valid for assessing knowledge, attitude and practice of e-health among health care providers.

The Aim of this study was to examine the contribution of electronic medical record systems to the improvement of safety and quality in clinical practice as perceived by intensive care physicians. Subject: The researcher selected 120 physicians who completed and returned the questionnaires. Design: A quantitative survey research was employed. Tools: A task-oriented Questionnaire for Evaluating EMR Systems , Safety Attitudes Questionnaire( Short form) and Medical service quality( Short form) were used. Results: Findings indicated that electronic medical records achieve a better use, quality and satisfaction by intensive care physicians. There were significant correlations between electronic medical records systems, improved safety and improved quality. Conclusion and Recommendations: An electronic medical record system was found to be positively correlated with improved safety and improved quality. Improved safety was found to be positively correlated with improved quality. The findings have implications for using electronic medical record systems. Therefore, policy makers are invited to use electronic medical record systems. This they can be through training physicians and nurses about the use electronic medical record systems . The results of this study pointed to the importance of including the electronic medical record systems in medical programs.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review different perspectives of health and illness keeping the human being at the center. Design/methodology/approach – This paper has been written based on the review of secondary literature. Findings – The analysis indicates that the appropriate perspective to use depends on normative considerations and the particular policy context to which it will be applied. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation was time and resources, which were overcome by meticulous analysis of secondary data and also through comparison of the results by achieving triangulation. Practical implications – The paper analyzed different perspectives of health and illness in order to increase the insight to the phenomena of health and illness; and also to reach a decision whether consensus among the perspectives is possible or otherwise. Originality/value – After analyzing the existing perspectives of health and illness, this paper proposes that an appropriate approach is needed to reconcile different perspectives for sustainable use.