The role of the Internet in health promotion

Abstract

The Internet is a place of flow and exchange of information which is accessible to an increasingly wide range of information seekers looking for specific information. The advent of the Internet influenced ‘many fields of human activity including the economy. The Internet plays an increasingly important role on the market of medical services both for health care providers and recipients. The Internet is a tool which enables health promotion. Health promotion is a set of activities leading to both increased control of human health and the improvement of human health. Under the law, the purpose of every public health care institution is not only health care but health promotion as well. Currently the Internet is one of the most effective instruments of health promotion as it enables the development of e-health promotion. The most ‘important tools of e-health promotion are Web sites and mailing. Health promotion is an essential part of
every Web site of every health care provider on Polish health care market. The same refers to the Web page of the National Health Service and different specific Web sites e.g. The Polish Cardiology Society. The paper deals with the role of the Internet in health promotion especially information technology instruments such as Web pages and electronic mail. The aim of the paper is to present ways and conditions of the effective use of the Internet in health promotion. Using the Internet allows health care institutions to put into practice their marketing strategy. The Internet should be widely used in health promotion as it gives a wide range of possibilities to promote medical knowledge and healthy lifestyle. The epromotion has more advantages than disadvantages. The most important advantages are as follows:

— wide influence in terms of time, space and demography,

— low costs of reaching the recipients and the reception,

— multimedia transmission (vision and sound),

~ great capacity of information,

~ speed of transmission and searching for information.

One of the disadvantages is potential health hazard connected with the fact that there is no interaction with the doctor and as a result, the information can be regarded as nor reliable. The Internet is an increasingly popular communication tool. However, in Polish circumstances barriers for the spread of the internet are underdeveloped infrastructure and high costs of the access to the Internet.