Paper Title
Health Professional Students Preparedness for E-Health

Abstract
Background: E-health is one of the recent major developments in healthcare provision. Today’s Health Professional Students are considered digitally oriented and this may endow them with the necessary capabilities to implement E-health on graduation. Aim: to assess student’s views, use, confidence and need for training on E-health. Participants: 4th, 5th and internship year students of the medical and dental schools at the Libyan International Medical University. Methods: A cross-sectional study using an online administered survey. Prior to implementation, the questionnaire was reviewed by experts and then piloted on a group of the research targeted students. Likert scale was used for most questions and few were in the form of short answers. Descriptive statistics were reported using SPSS version 20.0. Results: One hundred and two students responded and all responders were included for most select-response questions. Male to female ratio was 2:3 with a mean age of 24±1.8 years. Medical students accounted for 52% of participants. An average of 45% reported proficiency in written and spoken English. Only 12% have taken IT-related courses. Their view to E-health was moderately positive with a mean of 3.5±0.34 of 3.1±1.029. In spite of this, 43±3.9% have negative views on E-health. 58% use digital tools and software with a mean score of 2.43±0.6. Most students reported using social media especially Facebook (Mean 4.95±1.7). Students reported confidence level of ICT use of 3.4±1.2. They also described their confidence in learning a new technology with a value of 3±0.3. 32.9% expressed an overall need for training on ICT tools. Conclusion: The overall preparedness of this group for ICT is moderate and needs improvement. This could be achieved through introducing changes in the taught curriculum. Keywords - E-health, Health professional, learning confidence, ICT