An initial framework for Interactive Health Portals; using Actor Network Theory

Today, the interaction between patients and Interactive Health Portals (IHPs) is one of the hot topics of e-health domains. Online health care providers try to improve the quality of their online services to increase patients´ attraction, trust and loyalty. Dimensions of e-service quality (eSQ) in Interactive Health Portals (IHPs) are usually deployed in a heterogonous network where both human and non-human actors are equally important. Prior research on patients´ attraction, trust and loyalty indicates that dimensions of e-SQ are merely technical. However, due to socio-technical reasons, social aspects of these dimensions are inevitable. Therefore, this research is aimed at evaluating the relevancy of Actor Network Theory in the e-SQ context, and accordingly proposing a new theoretical framework for IHPs.