Using digital interactive television for the promotion of health and wellness

Digital interactive television (iDTV) is often seen as a platform with great potential to deliver health and wellness content and services directly to people. Despite the advantages of e-Health, public engagement with such services is still limited. Our research assumes that health literacy plays a key role on users’ engagement with these kinds of services and we postulate that it is one of the main predictors of users’ attitudes and behaviours towards iDTV health and wellness services. Our main goal was to identify and describe the factors that limit the efficiency of e-Health interventions and the potential depicted in this context by specific technologies – i.e. iDTV. The proposed research design adopts a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and techniques. The studies were conducted in a southern European country – Portugal – between 2012 and 2013. We found that 51.7% of the respondents showed high probability (þ50%) of having limited health literacy (low literacy) and they are more likely to be men/women with an average age of 49.81, fourth grade or less, belonging to status group D/E and showing less interest and less perception of the utility of e-Health interventions. The groups that depict limited e-Health literacy are also the ones least interested in digital TV services related to health and wellness. Following this, we propose that in order for people to realize the actual benefits of using these applications, it is essential to tailor both content and services in accordance with the depicted level of e-Health literacy.