Research About Villagers' Demand And Acceptability Towards E-Health Services In Xiangyun County Yunnan Province

In order to reduce the high technical gap between China and developed countries, the Chinese Government worked out and implemented "Program 863" in March 1986, which means an advanced technical-developing program. A new project aiming to develop core advanced digital health equipments and key technologies was included in the program. Project working team realized the signifance of scaling up e-health services in China from relevant surveys conducted for this project, and decided that a research about stakeholders' demand and acceptability towards e-health should be included. As a result, some surveys were organized in China for an exploratory purpose with one jointly conducted in Yunnan by the working team and Institute for Health and Development Sciences, Kunming Medical College.The research, the first case in China, is about villagers' demand and acceptability towards e-health services in Xiangyun County Yunnan Province. The Diffusion of Innovations Theory and other theories were adopted in this study in order to understand rural people's demand and acceptability of e-health. Nine hundred and eighty eight subjects were involved in the survey. They were from two townships in Xiangyun County, i.e., Xiangcheng Township and Shalong Township. Questionnare was applied with results incuding: (1) the e-health service which rural people most wanted, was first aid for serious emergencies; (2) most villagers wish that e-health services came true as soon as possible; (3 ) the related health issue which was most concerned by rural people is overcharging in hospitals; (4) most villagers saw or used more than three electronic devices and/or services; the higher people's education levels and the younger the people, the more they used electrical devices; ( 5 )most rural people experienced health promotion by using mobile phones, fixed telephones and/or computers; (6) the most four advantages of e-health services considered by the subjects included reducing unreasonable health service charging, more convenient and reliable health services, more timely treatment, and better health related counseling services, but differences were showed among people with different genders and experiences; (7) compared with the price of future e-health services, the complexity and security of using e-health services were more concerned; (8) most villagers were in favour of e-health development. The thesis also puts forward a number of recommendations and suggestions that may be useful to scale up e-health services.