How Health Care moves on the Web: the case of Health Social Network (original) (raw)

The paper focuses on health social network, as websites where patients can find medical information at a number of different levels – since services offered range from emotional support to self-tracking and to clinical trial access. To monitor them, in 2005 the World Health Organisation (WHO) founded the Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe), with the scope to certify health-care-on-the-web through an ethical code (HON, Health On the Net). It has been realized in order to facilitate the distribution of useful and reliable information on the web among citizens. Moving from the eight HON’s principles, with the addition of a new area based to a set of items referring to a cost-benefits analysis, we have carried out a research aiming at investigating potential relations between the rating and the economic benefit gained by an eHealth website. In addition, through a discriminant analysis it has been possible to weigh the attributes (referring both to the HON certification and to the cost-benefit analysis) due to the positioning of a website.