Digitális egészségértés áttekintése

Digital healthcare can be broadly separated into two categories: eHealth and mHealth (Chan J., 2021).

eHealth: The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined eHealth as “the cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies in support of health and health-related fields, including health-care services, health surveillance, health literature, health education, knowledge and research”. In other words, it is “the use of information and communication technologies for health”. In this respect, eHealth education refers to an individual's ability to search for, identify and assess the reliability of health information from the Internet and to properly manage or solve health problems through the knowledge they gain.

mHealth: The mHealth or mobile health is a sub-segment of eHealth. The EU eHAction defined mHealth as “the use of mobile communication devices in health and well-being services covering various technological solutions, which support self-management and measure vital signs such as heart rate, blood glucose level, blood pressure, body temperature and brain activity”. It is the “medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices”.

ehealth allows patients and doctors to communicate without meeting in-person. ehealth includes an electronic application that allows online communication whether on a mobile device (mhealth) or any electronic device (ehealth). “One of the [applications for ehealth] is the practice of telemedicine – the provision of healthcare services and medical information using innovative technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It enables secure exchange of information and enables people to communicate remotely about health-related issues - such as prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up - overcoming logistics and long distances.

Digital Health Literacy measurement

In addition to traditional health literacy, the eHealth literacy encompasses: traditional literacy (basic ability to read and comprehend written text), information literacy (the ability to find and use information), media literacy (the ability to think critically about media content and context), computer literacy (the ability to use computers for problem-solving) and scientific literacy (understanding how knowledge is created with its aims, methods, limitations, and politics.

For the evaluation of eHealth literacy, the eHEALS (eHealth Literacy Scale) was developed and validated in 2006 on Canadian adolescents and has been used most extensively as a subjective measure of eHealth literacy, showing little correlation with traditional health literacy or the objective high-level skills of searching and critically evaluating health-related online information.

The Digital Health Literacy measurement was an optional package in the HLS19 survey. From the V4 countries, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia implemented it while Poland didn’t participate in HLS19 at all. The specific measures of the Digital Health Literacy consist of three blocks:

1. Use of digital resources (6 items)
2. Digital health literacy (8 items)
3. Interaction with digital devices (2 items)

To analyze and report on Digital HL, a scale measuring the skills related to seeking health information digitally (HL–DIGI) was constructed. This scale consists of eight questions related to tasks on how easy or difficult it is to search for, find, understand, and judge health information from digital sources. How easy or difficult is it to:

• judge whether the information is reliable?
• judge whether the information is offered with commercial interests?
• use the information to help solve a health problem?
• judge whether the information is applicable to you?
• find the exact information you are searching for?
• understand the information?
• visit different websites to check whether they provide similar information about a topic?
• use the proper words or search query to find the information you are looking for?

To identify the subpopulations that could potentially be disadvantaged in terms of the Digital HL, the HL-DIGI mean scores were compared for selected potential vulnerable or disadvantaged sub- populations to the mean HL-DIGI score observed for the whole population. The vulnerable subpopulations being considered were older people, people with the lowest educational level, people with a low self-reported social status/level in society, financially deprived people, people with poorer health status, and people who most frequently use healthcare services.

Digital solutions can provide multimedia education for different reading levels in multiple languages, such as video, audio, and print, using formal and informal teaching methods. By giving patients a greater voice and empowering them to actively participate in treatment, they can develop their decision-making and shared decision-making skills. Rather than being passive participants, digital solutions offer individuals the opportunity to become active players in health (Conard, 2019).

In the last 10 years, healthcare digital solutions have become more and more common within the V4 countries as well. In the table below, we have summarized a few innovative digital solutions used by each country and their use/specific purpose: