About

This information portal is intended to provide comprehension information on IT technologies used in health care sector. The web site publishes recent news and articles related to health care in general, and ehealth in particular. We gather required information on the Internet and then select most interesting parts for publishing.

eHealth (also written e-health) is a relatively recent term for healthcare practice supported by electronic processes and communication, dating back to at least 1999. Usage of the term varies: some would argue it is interchangeable with health informatics with a broad definition covering electronic/digital processes in health, while others use it in the narrower sense of healthcare practice using the Internet.

The term can encompass a range of services or systems that are at the edge of medicine/healthcare and information technology, including:

• Electronic health records: enabling the communication of patient data between different healthcare professionals (GPs, specialists etc.);
• Telemedicine: physical and psychological treatments at a distance;
• Consumer health informatics: use of electronic resources on medical topics by healthy individuals or patients;
• Health knowledge management: e.g. in an overview of latest medical journals, best practice guidelines or epidemiological tracking (examples include physician resources such as Medscape and MDLinx);
• Virtual healthcare teams: consisting of healthcare professionals who collaborate and share information on patients through digital equipment (for transmural care);
• mHealth or m-Health: includes the use of mobile devices in collecting aggregate and patient level health data, providing healthcare information to practitioners, researchers, and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vitals, and direct provision of care (via mobile telemedicine);
• Medical research using Grids: powerful computing and data management capabilities to handle large amounts of heterogeneous data.
• Healthcare Information Systems: also often refer to software solutions for appointment scheduling, patient data management, work schedule management and other administrative tasks surrounding health.