Analyzing on JCI Certified Hospital Web Sitesin 8 East and Southeast Asian Countries

Abstract

Background: The worldwide medical tourism market has been growing dramatically these days. Thus, the first expression of a hospital's web site that can be accessed through the internet from all over the world becomes potentially important. This study was conducted to analyze the web site of hospitals in East Asian and Southeast Asian, total 8 countries that are certified by Joint Commission International(JCI). Methods: The selected web sites were reviewed to collect the information about the current trend of hospital web sites. According to previous studies and the collected information, evaluation criteria for creating a quality hospital web site were developed and reviewed by UI/UX design experts. Result: The evaluation criteria were refined according to the comments from the experts, and then used to analyze the hospital web sites. The results showed even a well-designed web site in all countries has room for improvement compared with other Asian countries. Conclusion: This study provides evaluation criteria for medical organizations’s web sites. This study has proven although countries that are under the same continent, due to the different lifestyle and cultural background they have, it had affected the hospital web site design.