Annenberg  
 School  
 for  
 Communication 
JCMC
July 2001          Margaret McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli, Editors
Volume Six, Issue Four     HEALTH AND THE NEW MEDIA
Special Issue Editor, Pamela Whitten, Michigan State University
[Annenberg School for Communication]
 University 
 of 
 Southern 
 California 


[The E-Health Market]
    The best chance for success in the delivery of online health care and services may exist through the combination of a traditional business with a physical site and a convenient Web presence, a "click and mortar" paradigm.
[Credibility of Health Information]
    Millions of Americans use the Internet as a resource for health information. Medical professionals do not author an extensive amount of online health information, which means that people who are ill may not get the information they need to obtain proper care. One way to begin addressing this problem is to assess perceptions of credibility about information found online.
[Behavioral E-Health]
    Barriers to psychotherapy online include lack of guidelines, screening tools, treatment protocols, and security. Psychotherapists are advised to proceed cautiously, yet steadily, in utilizing new media.
[Pediatric Telemedicine]
    Telemedicine will have many pediatric applications over the next five years and beyond, providing services and information to families. The authors describe how pediatricians who provided telemedicine services between a university medical center and an urban school district perceived technology use and patient relationships in the telemedicine program.
[Interactive Healthcare in Singapore]
    Wreless, integrated computer telephony, speech recognition, digital TV, and collaborative tools enhance physician-patient communication as well as access to health related transactions online. The authors evaluate the impact on Singapore healthcare.
[Telehospice]
    In 2000, a bi-state telehospice project was launched in Michigan and Kansas, designed to provide end-of-life services to hospice patients and their caregivers. The authors report that hospice providers are cautiously enthusiastic about telehospice, but initially skeptical about comparable quality to traditional visits. Patients and caregivers using telehospice, on the other hand, are uniformly positive and wish to see increased utilization within their own care plans.
[Telepsychiatry]
    Analyses of 43 psychiatric interviews with 14 different patients using an interactive videoconferencing system reveal that the telecommunications link compared favorably to face-to-face encounters in assessments by physicians and patients, although there were drawbacks.
[Margaret McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli, Editors]