E-health in Khartoum : Viewpoints from University Students

Sammanfattning: The research was conducted in Khartoum, Sudan, with the purpose to see whether there was an awareness on e-health among students in Khartoum and how they perceive health-related information on the Internet. As there is very little covered in this area, this research also aims to cover the gap in information and data of this field in this particular region, as e-health in Africa is an under-researched area in general. The general picture is that health information in Africa lacks coordination and that e-health system implementations are incapable of allocating crucial information on health for a continuity of care.[1] Health care systems are shifting towards models that emphasizes self-care management and two major concerns in the general perception of online based health information are; The limitations in health-seekers’ own ability as well as the limitations/credibility of online information. With this in mind I conducted a qualitative method using focus groups. I did so due to the ability of creating a discussion with a wider range of perspectives, with a larger number of participants during one discussion, rather than one-to-one discussion/interview, and to identify collective thoughts or perspectives in order to see what might be treated/viewed upon as culturally. The targeted groups consisted of students, mixed gender, in the age group of 17-25 in Khartoum. [1] Funmi Adebesin et al., ”A review of interoperability standards in e-Health and imperatives for their adoption in Africa”, South African Computer Journal, no. 50, 2013: 56, accessed 7 April 2017, http://sacj.cs.uct.ac.za/index.php/sacj/article/view/176/73.