Demographic Trends in Consumer E-Health Adoption: Analysis of NCI HINTS 2003 and 2005 National Surveys

It has become common for healthcare providers to offer e-health services to patients and other consumers. Experts suggest these services are desired by users, and this has been confirmed generally through empirical research. However, most empirical studies of e-health adoption have focused on demographically homogeneous populations and have been implemented through cross-sectional designs. This study applies data from two administrations of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) conducted by the U.S. National Cancer Institute to develop an analysis of adoption trends that crosses time (2003-2005) and also addresses effects of gender, age, socio-economic status, and race/ethnicity on e-health use. The analysis is further developed to distinguish differences in adoption of informational e-health services vs. transactional e-health services. Key findings of the analysis are that e-health use is increasing but usage is much higher for informational than for transactional uses. Informational e-health use is found to be significantly associated with gender, age, and race/ethnicity demographics. Transactional e-health use is significantly associated only with race/ethnicity and gender measures.