Physicians whose practice is not oriented to a specific medical specialty.
Published in Chapter:
European General Practitioners' Usage of E-Health Services
Jose Manuel Ortega Egea (Universidad de Almeria, Spain)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 10
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-889-5.ch069
Abstract
Technology plays an increasingly critical role in current markets. Diverse technological innovations are significantly changing how services are provided in different industries (Bitner & Brown, 2000). In this regard, new digital and Internet-related technologies are dramatically modifying how companies, employees, and customers interact in service encounters (Alba, Lynch, Weitz, Janiszewski., Lutz, Sawyer, & Wood, 1997; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). In the health care sector, Internet technologies have the potential to improve the provision of health and patient care services like no other communications medium in the past (Shepherd & Fell, 1997). The health care sector, where interpersonal encounters between health staff and patients determine to a great extent service quality and patient satisfaction, will require diverse modifications, in order to fully benefit from the improvements promised by Internet technologies.