An initial framework for Interactive Health Portals; using Actor Network Theory

Abstract

Today, the interaction between patients and Interactive Health Portals (IHPs) is one of the hot topics of ehealth domains. Online health care providers try to improve the quality of their online services to increase patients' attraction, trust and loyalty. Dimensions of e-service quality (e-SQ) in Interactive Health Portals (IHPs) are usually deployed in a heterogonous network where both human and non-human actors are equally important. Prior research on patients' attraction, trust and loyalty indicates that dimensions of e-SQ are merely technical. However, due to socio-technical reasons, social aspects of these dimensions are inevitable. Therefore, this research is aimed at evaluating the relevancy of Actor Network Theory in the e-SQ context, and accordingly proposing a new theoretical framework for IHPs.

Future Research on Dimensions of E-Service Quality in Interactive Health Portals

“…A heterogeneous network is a co-extensive network comprising a range of dissimilar elements called actors/actants (Tatnall & Burgess, 2002). ANT is aimed at describing a mixture of humans and non-humans (social and technical) actors to achieve a particular goal (Foroutani et al, 2012, Saedi & Iahad, 2013b. In fact, ANT consists of two parts, namely actors/actants (human and non-human or social and technical) and they are inseparable (Kaldoudi et al, 2011).…”