Awareness and willingness to use PHR: a roadmap towards cloud-dew architecture based PHR framework

Personal health record systems (PHR) assists people to access, manage and share their own health information. PHR is getting increasingly popular these days. However, there is not even a single PHR system being deployed in Saudi Arabia considering the special needs of Saudi Arabian society. Before a PHR system is deployed, it is mandatory to know the awareness and willingness of the people so that usability of the system can be defined. In this research, we have conducted a survey in Saudi Arabia to know the level of awareness of PHR systems and the willingness of people to adopt and use such systems. In order to conduct the survey, a total of one hundred and sixty four individuals from different age groups were selected randomly keeping in perspective the target population. For reaching to the ends that stretch beyond the immediate data alone, we have used the inferential statistics for our research work. During our inferential analysis, we have selected the cross-tabulation method for comparing two different variables. The cross-tabulation of categorical and ordinal data is a good tool for summarizing demographic information and searching for blueprints. We used the Chi-Square tests to find out whether an association (or relationship) between 2 categorical variables in a sample is likely to contemplate a substantial association between these 2 variables in the population. The results indicate that the level of awareness about PHR systems is still low in the Saudi society but the people are willing to use a personalized electronic system to manage their own health. The results further indicate that the availability of the internet is a major barrier to the realization of PHR systems. These results encourage to adopt a Cloud-Dew Architecture based Layered PHR system that goes beyond the trivial network/storage/service concept to a new micro-service concept offering high scalability and availability in vertically distributed computing hierarchy.