A150.
Rice, R. E., Sundar, S. S., & Kim, H-S. (2021).
Role of technology in health communication: Trends and trajectories. In
T. L.
Thompson & N. G. Harrington (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of
health
communication (3rd ed.) (Chapter 26, pp. 381-396). Routledge.
People
are using online media and a diverse host of other Internet-based
technologies
for their health communication needs at an unprecedented rate, a
reality that
has been in the making for more than 20 years and has been exacerbated
during
the COVID-19 crisis. The latest Health Information National Trends
Survey (
HINTS, 2019) reports that, within the prior 12 months, 71.9% of U.S.
adults
used the Internet to find health-related information for themselves,
47.4% have
one or more apps related to health and wellness on their tablet or
smartphone,
26.7% have used an electronic wearable device, 14.4% shared health
information
on social networking sites, 36.7% watched a health-related video on
YouTube,
and 36.5% have sent a text message to or received a text message from a
doctor
or other healthcare professional. This chapter provides an overview of
significant
trends and trajectories for studying digital and online health
communication technology.
Because of the vast literature in this area, we can only provide a
snapshot based
on mostly very recent publications that largely emphasize these topics.
The
reviews and studies in this chapter are characterized by a strongly
social
science and scientific perspective and thus provide little by way of
interpretive or critical-cultural studies. Other sources, however, such
as Neto
and Flynn’s (2019) edited comprehensive review of information and
communication
technologies and health in the Brazilian context, do apply qualitative
methods
and critical perspectives.
Health communication technologies can be
categorized in a variety of ways. The Medical Futurist Institute (2020)
discusses examples of health innovations, applications, and
contributions of 3D
printing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, genomics, health
sensors,
medical robots, nanotechnological devices, social media and
smartphones, and
virtual reality. Risling et al. (2017) categorize based on purpose:
one-way
discrete (reminders, announcements), two-way discrete
(assessment/Q&A,
consultations), one-way ongoing (reference material), and two-way
ongoing
(community building, knowledge sharing, engage/coordinate extended
healthcare
team). Our review of the literature suggests that there are three
broad, overlapping
classes of health communication technologies—electronic media (or eHealth,
the broadest of the three, which focuses on traditional web-based
technologies
and more general institutional and societal systems), mobile media (or mHealth,
which relies on smartphones and their apps), and ambient media (or aHealth,
technologies such as conversational agents, wearables, and games).
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