Design and Implementation of Hospital Online Services: In-Depth Assessment of Greece

The internet has become the source of information that most people generally prefer. This is also true in the field of health sector where patients and their relatives search for information on hospitals websites before visiting them. These websites are the link between patients and hospitals and should be a reliable source of information and a centre of interaction where users can trust. In Greece, there are 240 hospitals, both in the public and private sector, which have a functional website. All these websites were assessed using the Health Sector Website Assessment Instrument (HSWAI), a four dimensional-criterion evaluation tool which was created for this exact purpose: to assess hospitals websites. In this paper, we present the results of this assessment where important and interesting conclusions emerged and various comparisons were made. This assessment evidences that Greek hospitals, while they have very good technological features they do not provide good and quality services to their users, which is the most important. Specific assessment aspects that should be reconsidered are also identified. We strongly believe that our findings could help designers, owners or even administrators of these websites to identify their weaknesses and find the areas that need to be improved in order to provide better services to their users. Finally, the specific case can be used as a guide for application in other countries where HSWAI application can provide comparable results.