E-health systems and associated information technology could radically alter the course of a pandemic disease, such as a major outbreak of influenza internationally. It could provide healthcare workers, emergency services, patients and those at-risk with access to much-needed data on how disease is spreading and what measures could be taken to halt its progress. Unfortunately, suggest Junhua Li of the Asia-Pacific Ubiquitous Healthcare Research Centre (APuHC), at The University of New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues, the widespread adoption of e-health represents a significant disruption to current healthcare protocols and systems and stakeholders are not in a position to take full advantage of it.
Tomorrow, the three-day mHealth + Telehealth World 2013 conference kicks off in Boston. The 5th annual mHealth World Congress and the second annual Telehealth Congress have joined forces to showcase solutions from what are arguably the two hottest areas of eHealth. Yes, that's right. I said mHealth is a part of eHealth. Back in March, I was taken to task by a blogger when I stated in my column that "mHealth is a component of eHealth," citing the World Health Organization's definition.
Read more: mHealth and telehealth: Part of the eHealth tool bag
An international group of researchers says it has developed a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of various e-health programs, based on a new evaluation framework.
Reporting in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health, the researchers say they defined different stages of e-health program implementation and a series of areas to be considered in evaluating programs' effectiveness. The framework "helps understand various aspects of e-health programs and their impact that require evaluation at different stages of the life cycle," the authors reported.
Read more: Researchers develop tool to evaluate e-health effectiveness
An ageing population is seen as a threat to the quality of life and health in rural communities, and it is often assumed that e-Health services can address this issue. As successful e-Health implementation in organizations has proven difficult, this systematic literature review considers whether this is so for rural communities. This review identifies the critical implementation factors and, following the change model of Pettigrew and Whipp, classifies them in terms of "context", "process", and "content". Through this lens, we analyze the empirical findings found in the literature to address the question: How do context, process, and content factors of e-Health implementation influence its adoption in rural communities?
Read more: Implementation factors and their effect on e-Health service adoption in rural communities
mHealth, or m-Health, is the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, tablet computers, etc. for health services and clinical data collection. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in delivery of healthcare information to practitioners, researchers, and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vital signs, and direct provision of care.