Development of Web-based Health Care Services in Swedish County Councils : Strategies, Usage and Challenges

eHealth has been adopted by many countries across the globe in response to cut down cost and improve the quality of life. Sweden has been engaged in providing web-based health care services for its citizens for the past decade and county councils have the responsibility to develop them. The main aim of this thesis is to present answers to the following research questions:What strategies (formal and informal) guide the development of web-based health care services provided by the Swedish county councils?What barriers exist in relation to the development and usage of web-based health care services provided by the county councils from the viewpoint of their IT leaders?From the perspective of IT leaders in the county councils and in their capacity to develop, manage and monitor their organizations‘ website content, which web-based health care services are mostly accessed by users and what age group utilize the services most?The thesis is an exploratory research conducted through a survey based on a mail questionnaire that was posted to all 21 county councils in Sweden with 18 councils responding. The results show that all county councils have formally adopted the National eHealth Strategy to guide the development of web-based health care services and some have other informal strategies as well. Technological barriers, resistance to use the web-based services and changing business process to integrate ICTs have been identified by IT leaders as major challenges that impede the development of web-based health care services in Swedish county councils. Swedish citizens more frequently access prescription renewal and booking and cancellation of appointments than other available web-based health care services which depicts a trend towards the use of advanced interactive services than basic information seeking, and people in the ages of 46 to 55 have been identified as the frequent users of web-based health care services according to IT leaders from the county councils