The concept of e-health has been around for decades and has proven to benefit healthcare with improved quality and increased access. In modern days, e-health can often be seen in healthcare technologies connected to networks such as the Internet. Brazil has in recent years made great strides with its expansion of e-health in the country, however, some regions fall behind in this regard. This study has analyzed an exploratory survey conducted in Maranhão, a state in the northeastern region of Brazil, to understand the healthcare problems and use of digital solutions in the sampled municipalities. The survey was analyzed using a mixed approach with the goal of finding out if e-health technologies could alleviate the reported healthcare-related problems. A thematic analysis was performed on parts of the survey to identify the healthcare problems that the municipalities were experiencing. This was then followed up with descriptive statistics on questions that were related to e-health technologies to evaluate their usage level in the municipalities. The results of the study show that there are a wide variety of healthcare problems. Many of these can at least be alleviated by e-health technologies but the result also showed problems that are outside of the scope of e-health. One area of e-health that showed great promise in mitigating the problems was telemedicine. The use of telemedicine could increase access to healthcare for remote areas as well as provide specialist knowledge to healthcare facilities that require that expertise. This study can guide future research into the identified problem areas where in-depth studies are needed to better understand and map out solutions for specific issues.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-219607 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Ismail, Houner, Lumio, Anders |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för data- och systemvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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