The Survey of Willingness and Use of Information and Communication Technologies by People with Low Back Pain

Regular physical activity is effective in the treatment of low back pain. However, adherence to these exercises is difficult. Nowadays, the health care industry is using various forms of ICT to provide services to patients. Therefore, the aim of this study was to survey the willingness and use of information and communication technologies among people with low back pain.

This is an analytical study conducted in 2017. In this study, 200 samples low back pain were collected by use of convenience sampling method. The data collection tool was a checklist.

Nighty-nine percent of the participants used mobile phones based on Android; in addition, 51% of people stated that they were familiar with the Internet. Also, people with the mean age and standard deviation of 37 ± 9 were willing to use ICT tools more compared with people with the mean age and standard deviation of 45±13; in addition, they had a high willingness to use ICT tools and low willingness to use traditional tools (p<0.001).

In general, the results showed that a large number of people with low back pain were willing to use ICT tools to receive care services (like exercise therapy). The majority of people with low back pain used social networks and they had smart phones based on the Android whose services were used widely. So the technologies such as smartphones, laptops, social networks and internet services could be used for e-learning.