Use of Mobile Phone in Healthcare: Readiness among Urban Population of Puducherry, India
Mahendra M Reddy, Pruthu Thekkur, Marie Gilbert Majella, Kalaiselvi Selvaraj, Jayalakshmy Ramakrishnan, Sitanshu Sekhar Kar · International Journal of Medicine and Public Health · 2016
Introduction: Use of mobile phones in planning of health care interventions is on the rise.Before planning of such interventions, it is essential to know about readiness among the target population.Objective(s): To identify the access to personal mobile phone, knowledge on usage in terms of making/receiving call/SMS and the willingness to use mobile phone as a medium for health communication among adults in an urban area of Puducherry, South India.Methodology: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in two randomly selected areas out of the four in the urban field practice area of a medical college in Puducherry during July, 2014.Systematic random sampling was done to select 126 houses.All individuals above 18 years in those households were included.A pre-tested interview schedule was used to collect information.Association between socio-demographic factors and willingness to receive health tip through mobile phone was found using binary logistic regression.Results: Among 299 participants interviewed, 227 (75.9%) had personal mobile phones; 229 (76.6%), 128 (42.8%) and 131 (43.8%), were able to receive and make a call, read SMS, and text SMS respectively.Nearly 50% were willing to receive health information through mobile phones.Of these, 67.5% were willing to receive through call/SMS and 35.5% only through calls.On multivariate binary logistic analysis, individuals having personal mobile and younger age were found to be willing to receive health information through mobile phones.Conclusion: Three in every five individuals having personal mobile were willing to receive health information through mobile with most of them preferring call/SMS over only call.