Published on Authors of this article:. Background: The development of electronic health eHealth has offered the opportunity for remote care provision. Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the patterns of use, benefits, and perceived obstacles in eHealth among people living with HIV PLHIV and their caring physicians at hospitals. Methods: An online multicenter observational survey was conducted October , in 51 medical units across France by means of self-administered questionnaires to collect sociodemographic and medical data, and perceptions of eHealth.
Multiple correspondence analysis followed by mixed unsupervised classification were performed to analyze data of the respondents. Three groups of physicians also emerged. Conclusions: The literature on eHealth mainly classifies people as enthusiasts and skeptics; however, we identified a third profile among both PLHIV and physicians, albeit without a direct link between them.
For PLHIV, this third group is attentive to eHealth for improving their health condition, and for physicians, this group considers eHealth to offer benefits to patients and their own practice.
The World Health Organization defines eHealth electronic health as the application of information and communication technologies to all activities connected to health [ 1 ]. As eHealth offers remote care provision, such technologies can favor patient autonomy and compliance, while fostering closer links between patients and health care professionals, as well as among health care professionals themselves [ 2 ].
Data processing via computers, connected devices eg, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets [ 3 - 6 ], and connected objects has witnessed exponential development in recent years involving a broad diversity of actors [ 7 ]. The emergence and spread of HIV infection paralleled the development of eHealth within a short time period. In the last three decades, there has been a rise in freely accessible online journals, eLearning, and massive open online courses, which now supersede the printed page as the primary source of scientific knowledge for health care professionals [ 8 ].
