A review by ELIZABETH HUNTER, Director, Atlantica Prompt Advice Limited.
eHealth: Current status and future trends
Edited by George Demiris (2004).
IOS Press, Amsterdam: £61. ISBN 1 58603 442 1
This book provides information and ideas for strategic thinkers, operational managers, health care informaticians and professional policy makers involved in health care.
It introduces new ways of communications and transactions in health care, and challenges traditional definitions of patient and provider roles. For the purpose of this book eHealth is defined as “the use of advanced telecommunications such as the Internet, portable and other sophisticated devices, advanced networks and new design approaches aiming to support health care delivery and education”.
eHealth refers to a fundamental redesign of health care processes leading to patient empowerment – the transition from a passive role where the patient is the recipient of care services to an active role where the patient is informed, has choices and is involved in the decision-making process.
Exploring eHealth’s potential
The book demonstrates how eHealth has the potential to improve efficiency on a global level when patients cross national boundaries to seek treatment in other countries. It describes how it can enable medical facilities and services across countries to be linked and accessible to citizens.
Discussion topics focus on the use of mobile technologies in health care, “smart home” technologies, telemedicine applications that cross national borders and evaluation methodologies, transatlantic collaborations in bioinformatics, privacy techniques, retrieval of information, the use of the Internet in health care, and “health captology” – that is, the application of persuasive technology to health care.
Furthermore, it discusses legislative efforts and ethical concerns associated with the diffusion of eHealth, and reviews and compares policies in the European Union and the United States.
I strongly recommend this book to all people interested in health care informatics.