FACTORS INFLUENCING EXPECTANT MOTHERS' CONTINUED USE OF DIGITAL HEALTH INFORMATION

Background: Expectant women receive healthcare education at antenatal care (ANC) clinics, but it is noteworthy that expectant mothers tend to seek information from various sources beyond their primary healthcare providers. Aims: The study aims to investigate determinants influencing expectant mothers' continuous use of digital media for pregnancy information.  Methods: The study involves participants of expectant women who attend ANC clinics in five municipal hospitals. The hypotheses were tested with 580 responses using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via SmartPLS version 4. Results: The findings revealed that social media healthcare information usage, perceived severity, and emotional support on social media influence expectant mothers' decisions to continue using digital media for healthcare purposes. However, the effect of perceived vulnerability on social media healthcare information usage was insignificant.  Conclusion: This study concludes that expectant mothers will continue to adopt digital platforms to access healthcare information. The findings provide recommendations to help healthcare providers advance antenatal care. Keywords: Emotional support, healthcare, expectant women, SMHIC, social medi

EXAMINING INTERNET USAGE PATTERNS ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF MARGINALISED COMMUNITIES: THE CASE OF COMMUNITY INFORMATION CENTRES IN GHANA

In this paper, we explore the socio-economic effects of internet use at the community information centres (CICs) on livelihoods in three regions of Ghana. Sustainable livelihood framework was used as a lens to understand the phenomena being studied. Primary and secondary data collection methods were used. Three CICs in three regions were purposively selected and qualitative research method was adopted for the study. The data were analysed using Nvivo. The findings showed that sending email information was largely the reason why people used the Internet. We found that through the Internet, people learn, develop new business ideas and expand the market for their businesses. Internet service users cut costs of operation as well as increasing returns on investment. The internet as a social technology has also made business promotion and product launch accessible and affordable. Several small businesses have found ways to use theInternet to increase their brand awareness and get more clients at a minimal cost, and improved social discovery. With social networks like Face book and Twitter, people have easily kept up with all old friends and also made new ones both far and near. Despite these benefits, the use of Internet services at the CICs was bedeviled with some challenges such aspoor internet connectivity, cost of internet services and lack of staff skills to leverage its potential and empower clients. The result of the study provides a deeper understanding of the subject area, based on empirical evidence from the three regions of Ghana. The study recommended that CIC staff should develop a mind-set that is much more customer-focused and should treat the most underprivileged members of the communitiesastheirmostvaluedcustomersaswellastryingtounderstandtheirneeds and CIC project initiators need to be aware of the barriers that hinder people in marginalized communities from using CIC services. Efforts should be made to expand the benefits of the technologies to the majority. Failure to do this would mean that very few people would benefit from the CICs and the digital divide between rural and urban areas would still widen

Design and Implementation of an Online Blood Donation System

Blood donation is a critical component of healthcare, saving countless lives each year. However, many regions, including Ghana, face chronic shortages of blood supply, often resulting in life-threatening delays for patients in need. Traditional blood donation methods are plagued with inefficiencies, causing delays in matching donors with recipients, and hindered by cumbersome paperwork that discourages potential donors. To address these challenges, this paper introduces an Online Blood Donation System, which offers an accessible, efficient, and secure platform for connecting blood donors with those in need. The project encompasses a comprehensive study, employing the Agile methodology, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL, to design and develop the system. The system's objectives encompass facilitating blood donation, enhancing efficiency, increasing donor participation, ensuring data security, promoting awareness, and overall healthcare system improvement. This project aims to contribute to the healthcare sector by providing an innovative solution to blood donation challenges, ultimately saving lives and improving healthcare efficiency

ChatGPT: Early Adopters, Teething Issues and the Way Forward

From one-way communication to two-way communication, text-based to multimedia, unencrypted to end-to-end encrypted chats, computer, computer-to-human chats have evolved over the years to more sophisticated chatbots, mimicking natural human language based on predefined algorithms. ChatGPT is one of the most recent of such tools and, due to its capabilities has grown tremendously in use. Despite the numerous benefits of ChatGPT, some users have raised numerous concerns about its usage. The purpose of this study was to investigate the underlying determinants contributing to the effective adoption of ChatGPT, elicit from users the challenges to the use of ChatGPT, and make recommendations to developers and users on how to sustain ChatGPT. Questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and focus group discussions were used to collect data for discussion. The study revealed very high acceptance rates of the chat tool stemming from its initial wildfire spread of over 1 million users within 5 days of launch to the 85% acceptance or perception among users that ChatGPT has the potential to improve how they perform their own daily professional and personal tasks.  Although 90% of users claimed to find the tool relatively easy to understand, navigate and use they also pointed out areas that need upgrading such as inclusion of multimedia and more accessibility features

An Evaluation of Digital Addressing System Implementation in Ghana

Purpose: The research reviews the implementation of Ghana’s Digital Addressing System. Nearly six years into implementation and without an outward appearance of the meeting of the announced goals of the project, the research sets out to find out the likelihood of success or failure of the project and suggest remedial measures. Relevance: The implementation of digital addressing in Ghana holds and demonstrates promise for benefits relative to transportation, courier services, taxation, property ownership and title, among others. For policy makers, the findings of this work give direct pointers to what needs to be done to keep the concept useful. For researchers, the work has only opened the doors for further academic and technical introspection into digital addressing and its nuances especially in Ghana. Methods: Using a variety of quantitative and qualitative techniques the study assessed the implementation of the policy employing interviews, surveys, workshops and group discussion. It hinged on the Design-Reality Gap (DRG) model to identify the issues of interest with Ghana's digital addressing systems. Findings: We found out that the attempts, although well intended, fall short in several best practice aspects. The research found it difficult to confidently showcase any immediate successes arising out of the implementation of the Ghana Post GPS App and System and proceeds to point out specific areas in need of attention if Ghana’s Digital Addressing efforts are to meet the presumptive goals. Conclusion: The Digital Addressing System might be a partial failure unless action is taken to close design-reality gaps