Abstract
In modern times, technology is the driving force behind all human activity. The Internet is an integral part of people’s lives and the majority of daily activities are carried out through it. The health sector is no exception as new concepts such as e-health, mobile health etc. have been introduced. Patients and potential users of health services use the websites of healthcare institutions to find and access information about their health problems in health services. The present research carried out as part of a diploma thesis for the Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department of the “Electronic Governance” Master’s Program of the Aegean University, attempts to investigate the quality and completeness of the websites of Greek nursing institutions. The object of the research is the evaluation of hospital websites using the HSWAI evaluation tool. It is an excel file containing four(4) criteria with sixteen(16) indicators and one hundred sixty-eight(168) sub-indicators. Each sub-indicator includes a presumption that is examined to see if it is met by the nursing website under investigation. In the end a score is produced that identifies the hospital website according to the iHSWAI index global ranking. This fact helps the users and potential customers of health services to compare and choose the provider that satisfies them while at the same time it helps the administrations of the institutions to improve and enrich their hospital websites. The research sample consists of public and private nursing institutions operating in the Greek territory. One hundred and twenty-three(123) public hospitals and one hundred and twenty-two(122) private hospitals were evaluated, while sixty-four(64) institutions were not evaluated due to a lack of a website or technical difficulties. The results of the survey revealed that public hospitals have more complete websites as they performed better in the HSWAI score than the prifinvate ones. Also, the comparisons made in the context of the research results showed that the more beds a hospital manages, the better quality and more complete website it has. Also, the quality of hospital websites depends on the geographic area where the hospitals are located and the Health District they belong to.
