eHealth In China

Health informatics in China is about the Health informatics or Medical informatics or Healthcare information system/technology in China. The main review and assessment of health informatics in China for the WHO-Health Metrics Network was conducted in 2006 which details Provincial assessments, developing strategic plan outline, improving community health monitoring system, household surveys, routine health statistics system. Due to the Health Informatization Development Plan, all hospitals are required to increase investment in building digitized hospitals. This requirement is expected to accelerate the growth of China's HIT market by about 25 to 30% a year during 2006-2010. By the end of 2006, China's investment in its healthcare information systems (HIS) had increased by nearly 16 percent to RMB 5.8 billion, year-on-year. This amount accounts for approximately 0.5% of the country's total healthcare expenditures of RMB 866 billion during the same period. The market size is expected to expand to approximately RMB 15 billion in 2010. The development of China's HIT industry is generally considered to be at a preliminary stage, resembling that of western countries 20 years ago. However, as China learns more about available and emerging technologies, it now has the opportunity to leapfrog ahead.

Computers began to be used in hospitals in China in 1970s, but used as hospital information management since 1984. According to the contents, styles and scopes, HIS in China experienced four phases.[8] They are as follows:

• Stand-alone. Mostly used in out-patients charge, in-patient charge and drug warehouse management during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Department local area network. Representative applications are inpatient management; outpatient charge and drug deliver system, and drug management system.
• Integrity of hospital information system. Many big hospital constructed integrity hospital information system on ethernet over 100m since early 1990s.
• Telemedicine. With the development of IT and network, many big hospitals commenced to study implement telemedicine, through which the diagnostic digital images such as CT scans, MRIs and ultrasound CT can be transmitted.

The first three phases focus on hospital information management and the fourth phase patient-centered. In general, construction of HIS in China has made significant progress since the 1990s. According to some sample investigation about HIS, there are many characters as follows: the development of HIS are imbalanced, the differences among different regions are very significant. In more developed regions, the proportion of hospitals with HIS is high, and the level of HIS is also high, most of them are in the third phase, and a few hospitals are in fourth phase. In fact, the HIS in many hospitals is no worse than that in advanced foreign hospitals. On the other hand, the level of HIS in developing regions is low, the proportion of hospitals with HIS is also low, and most of them are in the second phase. But the potential market of HIS is very good. By 2004, the proportion of hospitals with HIS in East China was above 80%, whereas, it was less than 20% in Northwest China.