Survey on the Status of Persian-Language Health Services through the Internet

Abstract Background: The Internet has been able to convert the manner of information seeking and has changed the users’ approach to information particularly in health domain. In this regard, the number of Persian-language websites in health service are increasing. Therefore, information about the variety of services offered by them is very important. The present study was designed to describe the status and distribution of various health services provided by Persian language websites, including informative, consultative, diagnostic and therapeutic services, as well as patient administrative. Methods: In this descriptive study, 619 websites were selected based on a researcher-made checklist. These websites were obtained by Googling 37 keywords. The data were analyzed by SPSS. Results: The results showed that the highest percentage (94.4%) was related to informative services and the lowest percentage (3.2%) was related to diagnostic and therapeutic services. In addition, 81.6% of websites were offline. Moreover, Questions and Answers (61.2%) and video conferencing (1.1%) were the most and least frequent routes to communicate with users, respectively. Ultimately, the skin and beauty services (8.4%), were the most extensive services provided by Persian websites. Conclusion: The results showed that Internet is an excellent platform to provide various health services for Iranians and in Persian language. However, some Internet-based health services, including diagnostic and therapeutic services, still need further development and attention.