What is E-health?

 E-health is an evolving field in the juncture of medical informatics, public health, and
business, stating to the health services and information distributed or heightened through the
Internet and associated technologies.
 In a broader sense, the term exemplifies technical progress along with state-of-mind, an
approach of thinking and an attitude for networked, global thinking, to expand health care
locally, countywide, and universal by using information and communication technology.
 E-health encompasses all sorts of electronic health data exchange such as Telemedicine,
Tele-health etc.
 It also characterizes technological commitment towards global health care action.
 Simply understanding, E-health is the transfer of health resources and health care by
electronic means. It is the healthcare supported by electronics, informatics and tele-
communications.
According to World Health Organization (World Health Organization, n.d.) three main core
areas of E-health are:
1. Delivery of health information, for health professionals and health consumers, through the
Internet and telecommunications.
2. Using the power of IT and e-commerce to improve public health services, e.g. through the
education and training of health workers.
3. The use of e-commerce and e-business practices in health systems management.

What are the different E-health activities around the world?

 Endorsing and firming up the use of ICT (Information and Communication technologies) in
health development.
 Developing strategies and assessment agendas to help the member states select, embrace,
cope and estimate e-Health clarifications to support worthy governance and investment
verdicts.
 Providing supervision and technical provision to the Member States to incorporate e-health
solutions into their national e-health policies through a synchronized multi-stakeholder and
multisectoral approach.
 Monitoring and broadcasting on developments and inclinations in digital improvement for
public health to notify policy and practice in nations, and to report frequently on the use of e-
Health in the Region
 Supporting multisectoral partnership and management between diverse organizations with a
view to refining coordinated approaches for executing and scaling up cost‐effective e-Health
resolutions.

Characteristics of E-health:
The characteristics of e-health or what e-health should comprise of, can be illustrated in following 10
e’s. The 10 e’s of “e-health” (adopted from Eysenbach, 2001) are:

1. Efficiency

 One of the assurances of e-health is to upturn efficiency in health care, thus reducing costs.
  One potential way of decreasing costs would be by dodging duplicative or avoidable
diagnostic or therapeutic intermediations, through improved communication potentials
between health care institutions, and patient participation.

2. Improving the quality of care

 Increasing efficiency implicates not only decreasing costs but at the identical time improving
quality of services.
 E-health may improve the quality of health care by allowing comparisons between diverse
providers. It will also focus on quality assurance, aiming patient streams to the finest quality
suppliers.

3. Evidence-based

 E-health interventions must be evidence-based in the sense that their value and competence
should not be presumed but proven by laborious scientific assessment. Yet, plentiful work still
has to be done in this field.

4. Empowerment of consumers and patients

 By making the knowledge base of medicine and personal electronic records easily available
to users over the internet, e-health unseals new opportunities for patient-centered medicine
and facilitates evidence-based patient choice.

5. Encouragement

 E-health provides encouragement for a new link between the patient and health expert,
towards a true corporation, where choices are made mutually.

6. Education of physicians through online sources (ongoing medical education) and consumers
(health education, personalized preventive information for consumers)

7. Enabling information discussion and communication in a consistent way between health care

institutions.

8. Extending

 E-health extends opportunity of health care further than its conservative boundaries.
 This is meant in both a topographical sense along within a conceptual sense.
 E-health also facilitates consumers to effortlessly achieve health services online from
international providers. These facilities can range from simple advice/suggestions to more
compound intermediations or medications.

9. Ethics

 E-health includes new forms of patient-physician communication, poses new challenges, and
pressures to ethical issues
 For example: online professional practice, informed consent, privacy and equity issues.
10. Equity

 To make health care further justifiable is one of the assurances of e-health, but at the same
time there is a substantial risk that e-health might expand the gap between the “haves” and
“have-nots”.
 E-health is and should be equitably accessible to all the people, irrespective of their age,
race, gender, ethnicity etc.
 People, whose economic conditions are poor, people who lack skills, and access to
computers and networks, cannot use computers efficiently. As a result, these patient
populations (which would truly value the utmost from health information) are those who are
the least expected to benefit from developments in information technology, except political
trials ensure equitable access wholly. The digital gap presently runs between rural vs. urban
inhabitants, rich vs. poor, young vs. old, male vs. female people, and among the
neglected/rare vs. common illnesses.

Benefits of E-health:
 E-Health is the cost‐effective and protected use of facts and communication technologies
(ICT) in favor of health and health‐related fields.
 It covers more than a few interventions, together with telehealth, telemedicine, mobile health
(mHealth), electronic medical or health records (eMR/eHR), big data, wearable’s, and even
artificial intelligence.
 The role of e-health has been acknowledged as crucial in accomplishing supreme health
priorities such as universal health coverage (UHC) and the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs).
 eHealth conveys the promises and excitement of bringing e-commerce to health care.
 It provides quick access to patient records and information for efficient health care.
 Reduced paper work, reduced duplication of costs etc. thus reducing the cost of health care.
 Reduced medical errors and better clinical decision making.
 Better health care by improving all aspects of patient care, including safety, effectiveness,
patient-centeredness, communication, education, timeliness, efficiency, and equity.
 Better health by encouraging healthier lifestyles in the entire population, including increased
physical activity, better nutrition, avoidance of behavioral risks, and wider use of preventative
care.

Limitations/challenges of E-health:
 The financial barrier in procurement
 Cost challenges in common
 Shortage of IT and clinical resources
 Trouble in learning and using the software
 Personnel costs
 Systematizing of all health information systems, from the time when the content and
arrangement of all health information systems should be standardized
 It might be time-consuming to bring up-to-date the EHR comprehensively
 The unavailability or lack of the basic infrastructure, such as internet connection
 The lack of applicable software
 Even though it saves time, the decline list of options in health information systems may
perhaps lack comprehensive information.