Developing Trust Practices for E-Health

Abstract

The number of people turning to the Internet to meet their various health needs is rising. As the prevalence of this form of e-health increases, so the issue of trust becomes ever more important. This chapter presents a brief overview of e-health and describes how and why people are using the Internet for health advice and information. In order to understand the trust processes behind this engagement, a staged model of trust is proposed. This model is explored through a series of in-depth qualitative studies and forms the basis for a set of design guidelines for developing trust practices in e-health.