Introduction:

This article presents the Index of Preparedness in Information and Communication Technologies for Health Promotion (IATICS). This is a quantitative composite index that is used to measure the potential that the inhabitants of the Mexican municipalities have for exploiting the information and communication technologies (ICT) as a means to receive health promotion (HP). An interval-based municipality typology is defined from this measurement. Each defined interval is represented by using the IATICS nominal label. The typology allows defining strategies to exploit ICT in each municipality type.

Method:

IATICS is computed from statistical indicators of municipalities on: 1) availability of electrical power in households, 2) ICT products and services, 3) health services, 4) illiteracy, and 5) presence of speakers of any indigenous language who do not speak Spanish. The methodology to calculate the index is based on a simple arithmetic formula and it can be applied on Mexico’s data with a municipality territorial granularity or even finer; e.g. town (localidad), basic geo-statistical area (AGEB) or urban block (manzana).

Results:

The IATICS values, in its quantitative and nominal modalities, are computed for each of the Mexican municipalities applying the procedure specifically defined for this purpose. The data source for calculations is the Mexican Census on Population and Housing of the year 2010, which is carried out by the Mexican Institute for Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The results of these two indices (the quantitative and the nominal) have become available in worksheet files that can be freely downloaded from the WWW.

Discussion or Conclusion:

IATICS allows measuring, characterizing and prioritizing the potential that the inhabitants of Mexican municipalities have for exploiting the ICT for HP. IATICS offers a series of information resources contributing to the design of e-government public policies in the e-health area for the municipalities. The index values can be recalculated periodically to be updated with new census data. This allows measuring also the evolution of conditions in each municipality. Finally, this methodology can be applied on data from other countries, so that these can adapt it to the design and evaluation of their respective public policies on ICT-aided HP.

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