Is Davao City, Philippines Ready For E-Health?

Type Working Paper
Title Is Davao City, Philippines Ready For E-Health?
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2015
URL http://eprints.usm.my/31923/1/Dennis_John_F._Sumaylo,_Christian_Joy_C._Salas.pdf
Abstract
In the Philippines wherein most concepts are taken from a western perspective, the transmission of information from the source to the receiver rely solely on what is affordable and logistically doable resulting to areas in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Area (GIDA) sites to receive less or no health care information from the government. To answer this, the Department of Health (DOH) Regional Office XI and Davao City Health Office make their presence available to the netizens of Davao through its website. However, technical problems seem to always hinder a smooth transfer of information. For instance, the link provided for the City Health of Davao in the website of DOH Regional Office XI is not active. Furthermore, the website of Davao City Health Office is available intermittently. The presence of the City Health Office in Social Networking Sites (SNS) is not available as well despite the fact that the several government agencies and local government units are already doing online as well as offline transactions such as the local government of Davao City’s presence in twitter (@DavaoCityGov) as well as the presence of the Department of Education Regional Office XI in twitter (@DepEdDavao), including the active Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Mayor and Vice-Mayor of the city are evidences that the government wants to create an identity online. Despite its absence in digital media channels, Davao City Health Office is a recipient of the Outstanding Lifestyle Advocacy Award given by the DOH Regional Office XI. With this, it is assumed that once Davao City Health Office takes an active role in the communication process by designing new messages and introducing new channels to the growing demand of its clients; the city health office will be able to reach a lot of its clients. With this, a descriptive auditing of the current communication tools and the readiness of Davao City to shift from traditional communication tools to eHealth is documented in this paper. This working paper is part of a descriptive ongoing study on the health communication cycle in Davao City.

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