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The move toward e-health care in various countries is envisaged to reduce the cost of provision of health care, improve the quality of care and reduce medical errors. The most significant problem is the protection of patients’ data privacy. If the patients are reluctant or refuse to participate in health care system due to lack of privacy laws and regulations, the benefit of the full-fledged e-health care system cannot be materialized. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the available e-health data privacy protection laws and the perception of the people using the e-health care facilities.

The researchers used content analysis to analyze the availability and comprehensive nature of the laws and regulations. The researchers also used survey method. Participants in the study comprised of health care professionals (n=46) and health care users (n=187) who are based in the Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The researchers applied descriptive statistics mechanisms and correlational analysis to analyze the data in the survey.

The content analysis revealed that the available health data protection laws are limited in scope. The survey results, however, showed that the respondents felt that they could trust the e-health services systems offered in the UAE as the data collected is protected, the rights are not violated. The research also revealed that there was no significance difference between the nationality and the privacy data statements. All the nationality agreed that there is protection in place for the protection of e-health data. There was no significance difference between the demographic data sets and the many data protection principles.

The findings on the users’ perception could help to evaluate the success in realizing current strategies and an action plan of benchmarking could be introduced.

This study aims to investigate the user’s behavior and intention to continue using e-health services by analyzing the factors influencing their decision. The stimuli–organism–behavior–consequence (SOBC) framework was used to assess how the risks and benefits of e-health influence both behavioral intention (BI) and continued use.

The hypotheses proposed for this study were tested with partial least square-based structural equation modeling. This study relied on the primary data collected from 572 respondents using convenient sampling.

This study examined the SOBC model’s four phases’ with the help of eight constructs. The conceptual model allowed the authors to examine 10 relationships to measure e-health adoption behavior in emerging nations like India. This study found that convenience, perceived risk and facilitating conditions are positively related to the effort and performance expectancy (PE) associated with e-health consultation. Only social influence is unrelated. This study also found a positive and substantial relationship between BI, effort and PE.

The study uses the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the SOBC paradigm to determine the factors influencing users’ intentions to use e-health. In addition to bringing new aspects to the existing literature on technology adoption and e-health consultation, the results of this study will aid e-health service providers in formulating strategies to promote the usage of e-health in emerging economies like India.

This study aims to explore the different dimensions of e-healthcare ethics and their relationships, influencing the ethical concerns of the consumer in making ethical e-healthcare choices.

A study was conducted at two identified major hospitals of Punjab (a private hospital) and Chandigarh (a public hospital), India providing e-healthcare services with the help of a self-administered questionnaire. The respondents were identified from the waiting areas of the selected hospitals, and only those respondents were selected for the study, who agreed to be aware of e-health services and were using them for some time. The statistical analysis was done using the structural equation modeling technique and included both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using SPSS 20 and AMOS 21.

Exploratory factor analysis extracted five dimensions of ethical concerns of the consumer, which include service promotion, content quality, candor, professionalism and confidentiality. The results signify that content quality plays a significant role in ethics, followed by candor, service promotion and confidentiality. However, the relationship with professionalism did not prove to be significant for the ethical concerns of the e-health consumer.

This research delivers a practical significance in identifying the critical dimensions of the ethical concerns of the consumer while selecting e-health services. It gives an insight into the various dimensions, which should be considered by the e-health providers while crafting e-health services to make it more ethically acceptable by the consumers.

By using e-health services, consumers play an active role in their health-care decisions. The consumers need to consider ethics while choosing health-care services as an ethical judgment will also be the correct judgment. This study helps in the identification of the significant dimensions for the ethical concerns of the consumers.

Technology has revolutionized the delivery of health-care services, with e-consultations becoming popular mode of service delivery, especially during the pandemic. Extant research has examined the adoption of e-health consultation services, with little attention paid to examine the switching behavior. This study aims to identify factors affecting patients’ intentions to switch from conventional mode i.e. visiting hospitals/clinics to e-health consultations.

To understand this we use the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework and integrate variables from status quo bias framework to the model. A cross-section research design was used, which rendered 413 valid responses which were obtained from the patients visiting a traditional hospital setup. The data was analyzed using partial least square – structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.0.

Findings suggest that push effects (inconvenience and perceived risk), pull effects (opportunity for alternatives and ubiquitous care), mooring effects (trust) and inertia significantly influence patients’ switching intentions from visiting hospitals/clinics to e-health consultations. Further, habit and switching cost positively influence inertia.

This study shall enable online health-care service providers and practitioners to understand patients’ intentions to switch to online health platforms and accordingly develop related marketing strategies, services and policies to encourage them to switch to the new offerings.

The current study enriches the previous research on e-health services by applying and extending PPM framework as the base model and showing its efficiency in predicting individuals switching intentions in the context of emerging economies. This study bridges the gap by focusing on switching behavior in context of health services.

The growing implementation of electronic health (e-health) systems has raised the importance of analyzing how these systems have been implemented in diverse regions. By employing a contextual sensitive approach and social mechanism theory, this study aims to better understand the reasons for the success and failure of e-health initiatives in the ex-Yugoslav region and derive useful insights for policymakers.

We employ a narrative review process grounded in the social mechanism theory, extended with field experts’ review, to acquire state-of-the-art information.

Findings indicate that different e-health systems coexist and evolve in different contexts in different countries, with varying levels of success. The contextual differences shape the broader environment, affecting the level of preparedness and capability for e-health implementation. Top-down approaches dominate e-health implementation in most countries when it comes to design process features, and more developed countries do not rely on strong social mechanisms for implementing e-health due to the openness of their culture towards e-health innovations.

Analyzing the milestones, challenges and functionalities of e-health systems in the region of interest can assist policymakers, academics and practitioners in making informed decisions and recommendations to enhance future e-health implementation.

No known studies evaluated e-health initiatives in the former ex-Yugoslav countries holistically and evolutionarily in the form of a comprehensive regional study. Further, our research endeavor is contextually specific since the health systems of these countries in the past were tied together under the federative umbrella health system and then diverged in terms of e-health development.

This research explores the factors that influence patients' willingness to seek digital health advice in developing countries like India by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) with perceived risk (PR) and trust.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses proposed for this study. The primary data for this study were acquired from 578 respondents using a judgmental sampling procedure.

Results of this investigation reflected a positive and significant connexion of the intention of a patient towards e-health consultation with effort expectancy (EE), performance expectancy (PE), trust and social influence (SI); conversely, factors like facilitating condition (FC) and PR are not significantly connected with the same.

The findings of this study will not only add to the existing literature on the behavioral intention (BI) by introducing new dimensions in the context of digital health consultation, but they will also aid service providers in developing strategies to encourage the use of e-health consultation services in emerging economies such as India.

This study aims to focus on electronic applications that have an effective role in raising the awareness of the dangers of viruses’ transmission from person-to-person and their positive and important impact on people’s lives.

The authors illustrated the effects of socializing with infected people on a human body by a model in geometry and how the prospected antibiotic annihilates the structure of the virus. The authors discussed vital operations inside the human body to expound the geometry of objects that are closed under their operations, such as viruses, especially Coronaviridae.

Also, the authors discussed some of the e-health applications in Jordan. As e-health activities, programs and applications have been given attention, the authors focused on potentials for constructing strategies that lead to create a featuring health technology.

Moreover, in this study, the authors explored the structure and geometry of Coronaviridae family, especially coronavirus that causes lots of diseases, and explained its movement mechanism using the mathematical structures.

Modern e‐health systems incorporate different healthcare providers in one system and provide an electronic platform to share medical information efficiently. In cross‐context communications between healthcare providers, the same information can be interpreted as different types or values, so that one patient will be issued different identifiers by different healthcare providers. This paper aims to provide a solution to ensure interoperability so that multiple healthcare providers will be able to collaborate in one e‐health system.

This paper primarily focuses on how different healthcare providers, instead of the patients, are able to interact and share information on a common e‐health platform.

In the course of the work, it was found that previous e‐health solutions mainly have a limited view of patient information, where a user‐centric approach for identity management is usually restricted to a single healthcare provider. Interoperability in an e‐health system becomes more problematic when more actors collaborate, and hence linkability from one context to another should not be straightforward. However, some form of linkability, such as the possibility to follow up a patient's medical treatment, is desirable in the e‐health sector, even when it needs to cross different contexts. Therefore, the authors have designed an identity management mechanism to ensure semantic interoperability when data is exchanged among different authorized healthcare providers.

The paper points out that the next generation of e‐health will move towards federated e‐health and will require user‐centricity and transparency properties so that patients are able to specify and verify the disclosure of their medical information.

This paper proposes a new service for cross‐context identity management in e‐health systems, improving interoperability between agencies when context‐specific information is transferred from one healthcare provider to another. How the proposed cross‐context identity management service can be integrated in an e‐health system is explained with a use case scenario.

Health service quality is an important determinant for health service satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate requirements of e‐health services and to develop a measurement model to analyze the construct of “perceived e‐health service quality.”

The paper adapts the C‐OAR‐SE procedure for scale development by Rossiter. The focal aspect is the “physician‐patient relationship” which forms the core dyad in the healthcare service provision. Several in‐depth interviews were conducted in Switzerland; first with six patients (as raters), followed by two experts of the healthcare system (as judges). Based on the results and an extensive literature research, the classification of object and attributes is developed for this model.

The construct e‐health service quality can be described as an abstract formative object and is operationalized with 13 items: accessibility, competence, information, usability/user friendliness, security, system integration, trust, individualization, empathy, ethical conduct, degree of performance, reliability, and ability to respond.

Limitations include the number of interviews with patients and experts as well as critical issues associated with C‐OAR‐SE. More empirical research is needed to confirm the quality indicators of e‐health services.

Health care providers can utilize the results for the evaluation of their service quality. Practitioners can use the hierarchical structure to measure service quality at different levels. The model provides a diagnostic tool to identify poor and/or excellent performance with regard to the e‐service delivery.

The paper contributes to knowledge with regard to the measurement of e‐health quality and improves the understanding of how customers evaluate the quality of e‐health services.

This study was carried out to examine the volume and annual growth pattern of research on e-health literacy research, investigate the open-access types of e-health literacy research and perform document production by country and by sources. The study also mapped the keywords used by authors to represent e-health literacy research and performed an analysis of the clusters of the keywords to reveal the thematic focus of research in the area.

The research was guided by a bibliometric approach involving visualization using VosViewer. Data were sourced from Scopus database using a syntax that was tested and verified to be capable of yielding reliable data on the subject matter. The analysis in this study was based on bibliographic data and keywords.

A total number of 1,176 documents were produced during 2006 and 2022. The majority of the documents (18.90%) were published based on hybrid open-access processes, and the USA has the highest contributions. The Journal of Medical Internet Research is the venue for most of the documents on the subject. The 1,176 documents were described by 5,047 keywords, 4.29 keywords per document, and the keywords were classified into five clusters that aptly capture the thematic structure of research in the area.

e-Health literacy has experienced significant growth in research production from 2006 to 2022, with an average of 69 documents per year. Research on e-health literacy initially had low output but began to increase in 2018. The majority of e-health literacy documents are available through open access, with the USA being the leading contributor. The analysis of keywords reveals the multifaceted nature of e-health literacy, including access to information, attitudes, measurement tools, awareness, age factors and communication. Clusters of keywords highlight different aspects of e-health literacy research, such as accessibility, attitudes, awareness, measurement tools and the importance of age, cancer, caregivers and effective communication in healthcare.

This study has practical implications for health promotion. There is also the element of patient empowerment in which case patients are allowed to take an active role in their healthcare. By understanding their health information and having access to resources that help them manage their conditions, patients can make informed decisions about their healthcare. Finally, there is the issue of improved health outcomes which can be achieved by improving patients' e-health literacy. Visualisation of e-health literacy can help bridge the gap between patients and healthcare providers, promote patient-centered care and improve health outcomes.

Research production on e-Health literacy has experienced significant growth from 2006 to 2022, with an average of 69 documents per year. Many e-health literacy documents are available through open access, and the USA is the leading contributor. The analysis of keywords reveals the nature of e-health literacy, including access to information, attitudes, measurement tools, awareness and communication. The clusters of keywords highlight different aspects of e-health literacy research, such as accessibility, attitudes, awareness, measurement tools and the importance of age, cancer, caregivers, and effective communication in healthcare.