Does gender matter? Exploring perceptions regarding health technologies among employees and students at a medical university.

Abstract

With the emergence of an always-on culture and the private smartphones always within reach, professional and recreational contexts overlap. Little empirical knowledge is available on prevailing online habits among healthcare personnel and whether gender matters in this context. To investigate health technology-related preferences, we conducted an online survey among a purposive sample of employees and students at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. In total, 905 participants (59.0%, 540/905, females) provided self-reported information on use of online services and mobile health applications (apps) as well as respective gender-specific internal and external apperceptions. Mann-Whitney U tests and binary regression analysis assessed respective gender differences. The structured German questionnaire was validated by principal component analysis. The study found a moderate familiarity with health technologies. As for gender differences, prevailing health app use was high among both male and female participants (39, 141/365, and 42%, 229/540, respectively), with apps for tracking activity and nutrition habits most commonly used. Approval for monitoring health and lifestyle parameters, eHealth and telemedicine knowledge levels, and online health information retrieval predicted health app use, whereas gender did not. Socio-demographic attributes including gender influence not only private online habits of users, but might also affect acceptance of health technologies and their professional use in a clinical setting. Thus, addressing the gender dimension already in concept stages of digital devices and services for healthcare and lifestyle could speed up private and public adoption of health technologies.