The Internet and Health in Brazil

The popularization of the Internet, due in larger part to the advent of multifunctional cell phones, poses new challenges for health professionals, patients, and caregivers as well as creates new possibilities for all of us. This comprehensive volume analyzes how this social phenomenon is transforming long-established healthcare practices and perceptions in a country with one of the highest numbers of Internet users: Brazil.

After an opening text that analyzes the Internet and E-Health Care as a field of study, the book comprises six parts. The first part introduces the emergence and development of the internet in Brazil, its pioneering experience in internet governance, digital inclusion, and online citizen participation. The second part is dedicated to internet health audiences by analyzing the cases of patients, the young, and the elderly seeking and sharing health information online, especially in virtual communities. The third part is dedicated to the challenges that the expansion of the internet in healthcare poses to all of us, such as the evaluation of the quality of health information available online and the prevention of the risks involved with online sales, cyberbullying, and consumption of prescription medicines. The fourth presents some innovative e-learning experiences carried out with different groups in Brazil, while the fifth part analyses some practical applications involving the Internet and health, including studies on M-Health, the Internet of things, serious games and the use of new information and communication technologies in health promotion. The last chapter analyses the future of healthcare in the Internet Age.

The authors establish a critical and creative debate with international scholarship on the subject. This book is written in a direct and comprehensible way for professionals, researchers, students of communication and health, as well as for stakeholders and others interested in better understanding the trends and the different challenges related to the social phenomenon of the internet in health.

• mHealth
• eHealth
• Digital health
• Internet and healthcare
• Internet in Brazil
• Expert patient
• Telemedicine
• Health information on the web
• Health e-learning
• Health and social media
• Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet
• Digital natives
• Health communication
• Internet and medicines
• Games and health
• Internet of things and health

• National School of Public Health, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  André Pereira Neto

• Department of Political Science and International Studies & Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA

  Matthew B. Flynn

André Pereira Neto is a full professor at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil, where he coordinates the Internet, Health and Society Laboratory (LaISS) and teaches at the graduate program in Information and Communication in Health. Graduated in History at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, he holds a Master in History from Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, a PhD in Public Health from the Rio de Janeiro State University and has carried out sabbatical studies in Sociology of Health at the University of California, San Francisco. 

Matthew B. Flynn is an Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Georgia Southern University, USA. He graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, has a Masters in Sociology from the London School of Economics, and received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. His publications include State, Society and Industry in Brazil’s AIDS Program (2014) and Challenging Immigration Detention: Scholars, Activists and Policy Makers (2017).

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