E-health

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E-Health (also spelled eHealth ), short for Electronic Health ( English for health based on electronic data processing or health telematics ), is a collective term for the use of digital technologies in health care. It refers to all aids and services that use information and communication technologies (ICT) and that are used for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and administration in the healthcare sector.

definition

Up to the turn of the millennium, e-health was primarily used to describe the digitization of traditional processes in public health such as electronic health records or electronically supported disease and knowledge management. Other ICT-based processes in medicine such as health information networks or telemedicine were listed in parallel with e-health. As a result of new technological developments such as the mobile Internet or the Internet of Things , a large number of other ICT-based applications for the healthcare sector have since developed. This led to a more general version of the e-health definition, which is now used as an umbrella term for a large number of areas:

The disciplines of medicine, IT and health management will be merged into the new e-health department. Master’s courses have been offered in Germany since 2007, and bachelor’s courses since 2015 in the field of e-health. On December 21, 2015, the law for secure digital communication and applications in the health care system as well as amending other laws was passed that introduces e-health technologies in the German health care system. Global sales for e-health products and services were estimated at US $ 85 billion in 2014, and the market grew by 15% annually.

Origin of the term

As a collective term for the meeting of internet and medicine, e-health first appeared in 1997 in business magazines and studies by management consultancies in the course of the dotcom boom . It wasn't until the year 2000 that the term e-health finally appeared in medical journals. However, science and industry have been dealing with the subject of e-health for a long time without using this term. Internet-based applications in medicine, for example, have been considered scientifically since 1991 at the latest. The fact that something new can arise from the meeting of patients and the Internet for medicine and the doctor-patient relationship has been described sporadically since around 1993/94 and increasingly since 1995/96 in the specialist and public press.

Basics and development of e-health

So-called mHealth applications, which provide e-health solutions on mobile devices, are a new area. E-health applications in telemedicine are sometimes meant when they are based on the internet infrastructure or internet technology. Examples of this are IT-supported expert consoles or remote monitoring of patient vital signs in-house. Concepts of direct patient- computer interaction to supplement the doctor's conversation are also gaining in importance with the Internet and are often included in e-health as a result. Such methods have been known in the USA since the 1970s without the term e-health having been used for them. As early as 1975 and 1976, projects were described for a computer-aided survey of the anamnesis , in which the patients themselves operated the computers.

E-health as a means of networking

E-health is often used to describe the networking efforts in the health system (e.g. electronic patient files) or general IT-driven infrastructure initiatives (e.g. electronic procurement via the Internet). In addition, the term e-health tends verschiedenster actors (of is insurance through health portals to virtual self-help groups ) out health information and services via the Internet layman - consumer accessible. The same applies to the globally observable trend that patients find out about medical topics on the Internet and consequently exert greater influence on their health care. This “participatory health care” is related to the opportunities created by the Internet to integrate patients and other reference groups in the rapid dissemination, evaluation and summary of health information. The common goal is an improvement in health care in general, as well as a possible improvement in patient care (patient experiences) and ultimately also the treatment results (medical outcomes).

One of the attempts to define the term e-health is therefore correspondingly comprehensive: Gunther Eysenbach, Professor of Health Care at the University of Toronto, saw it not only as “a technical development, but also a [...] (special) way of thinking, Attitude and commitment to networked and global thinking in order to improve health care [...] through the use of information and communication technology ”. Overall, it is becoming apparent that the new term was introduced to clearly indicate that something new would emerge from the convergence of the Internet and medicine , combined with both opportunities and risks for all players in the healthcare sector . “E-health is driven by non-professionals, namely the patients (or, in e-health jargon , the consumers), who create new services in the health care system with their interests - mostly around their efforts to emancipate through access to information and knowledge to strengthen ". In isolated cases, teletherapy projects are already being used in practice.

In 2005, the 58th World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that “E-health describes the inexpensive and safe use of information and communication technologies to promote general health” - this includes support for the health system, health reporting, health promotion, and general knowledge and research.

Forms of e-health

Depending on the subject area and level of expansion of e-health applications, these can be divided into different forms of e-health:

  • Information - The provision of information for patients or doctors via information portals
  • Communication - The exchange of information between two parties (patient - doctor, doctor - doctor, ...) without direct and prompt reaction from the communication partner (e.g. online diabetes diary)
  • Interaction - The exchange of information or data between participants with an immediate reaction from the communication partner (e.g. home monitoring )
  • Transaction - the targeted exchange of data between different partners with the aim of being able to map and process the provision of medical services completely electronically (see electronic patient card )
  • Integration - The lifelong recording of all data relating to a patient's health. Consolidation of all data from medical and paramedical areas and supplementing the information with details and entries from the patient himself ( electronic health record ).

Related terms (partly synonyms)

Practical use

In 2018, the non-profit Bertelsmann Foundation published an empirical study examining the digital transformation in the health system in 17 countries. In the top group were Estonia, Canada, Denmark, Israel and Spain. Digital technologies are already part of everyday life in these countries. In comparison, Germany has a lot of catching up to do. With the exception of a few pilot projects, there is hardly any practical application.

See also

literature

  • A. Allen: When the ship.com comes in. Editor's note. In: Telemed Today. 7, 6, 1999, p. 7.
  • René Fitterer, Tobias Mettler, Peter Rohner: What are the benefits of eHealth? Institute for Information Systems, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen 2009 (online)
  • D. Groß, EM Jakobs (Ed.): E-Health and technologized medicine. New challenges in healthcare. (= Anthropina. 2). 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0453-4 .
  • Peter Haas, Andreas Meier, Heinz Sauerburger: E-Health. Business informatics practice. (= HMD. 251). dpunkt.Verlag, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-89864-383-2 .
  • E. Hahn, M. Reuter: Medical advice, treatment and information via the Internet - does e-mail replace a personal conversation? In: Frank Duesberg (Ed.): E-Health 2012 - Information Technologies and Telematics in Health Care. 2011, pp. 280-287.
  • IBM (Switzerland): Paths to personalized medicine in Switzerland. www-05.ibm.com
  • D. Kraft: Telematics in Healthcare. (= DuD specialist articles). Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-8244-2166-6 .
  • K. Jähn, E. Nagel (Ed.): E-Health. Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-540-43937-4 .
  • HU Prokosch: KAS, KIS, EKA, EPA, EGA, E-Health: A plea against the Babylonian confusion of terms in medical informatics. In: Computer science, biometrics and epidemiology in medicine and biology. 32/4, 2001, pp. 371-382.
  • U. Wirth: News from Digit @ lien - Social networks in the health sector (1). To locate Health 2.0 in Europe. In: mdi - Forum of Medicine_Documentation and Medicine_Informatics. 2, 2010, pp. 67-73. ( Download ; PDF; 181 kB)
  • U. Wirth: Health 2.0 - Social networks in the health sector. In: Knowledge Management. The magazine for executives. 6, 2010, pp. 12-14.

Taken from: F. Tautz: E-Health and the consequences. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2002, pp. 20ff.

Further books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ec.europa.eu European Commission DG Health. Access on 29 December 2015. http://www.webcitation.org/6e8drhqdT ( Memento of 29 December 2015 Webcite ) .
  2. ↑ mint.studieren-mit-meerwert.de ( Memento from December 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Ministry of Education, Science and Culture Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, accessed on December 28, 2015. http://www.webcitation.org/6e7V3w7w4 ( Memento dated December 28, 2015 on WebCite ) .
  3. ↑ institut-ehealth.de University of Applied Sciences Flensburg, Institute for eHealth and Management in Health Care: Accessed December 28, 2015. http://www.webcitation.org/6e7SC1aG5 ( Memento from December 28, 2015 on WebCite ) .
  4. ↑ mimeb.fh-stralsund.de University of Applied Sciences Stralsund. Accessed December 28, 2015. http://www.webcitation.org/6e7ULcjGc ( Memento December 28, 2015 on WebCite )
  5. ↑ Eysen
  6. ^ A b V. Della Mea: What is e-health (2): The Death of Telemedicine? Editorial. In: Journal of Medical Internet Research. 3 (2), 2001, p. E22.
  7. ↑ JC Bauer: Consumerism redefined ... the e-health imperative. In: Mich Health Hosp. 36, 4, 2000, p. 42.
  8. ^ D. Goldstein: The e-healthcare cybertsunami. In: Manag Care Q. 8, 3, 2000, p. 9.
  9. ^ J. Hankins: The Internet. In: Adm Radiol. 10, 8, 1991, p. 69.
  10. ↑ HealthTech Wire Dossier: mHealth - 2012th
  11. ^ T. Ferguson: From patients to end users. In: BMJ. 324, 2002.
  12. ^ W. Slack: Cybermedicine: How Computing Empowrs Doctors and Patients for Better Health Care. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 1997.
  13. ^ SH Schuman, HB Curry, ML Braunstein, R. Schneeweiss, GC Jebaily, HM Glazer, JR Cahn, WH Crigler: A computer-administered interview on life events: improving patient-doctor communication. In: J Fam Pract. 2, 4, 1975, p. 263.
  14. ^ Dean Giustini: How Web 2.0 is changing medicine: Editorial. In: British Medical Journal. 333, 2006, pp. 1283-1284.
  15. ↑ Vincenzo Della Mea: What is e-Health (2): The death of telemedicine? In: Journal of Medical Internet Research.
  16. ^ A. Allen: When the ship.com comes in. Editor's note. In: Telemed Today. 7, 6, 1999, p. 7.
  17. ↑ 58. World Health Assembly WHA58.28 eHealth 2005 http://www.who.int/healthacademy/media/WHA58-28-en.pdf
  18. ^ Rainer Thiel, Lucas Deimel, Daniel Schmidtmann, Klaus Piesche, Tobias Hüsing, Jonas Rennoch, Veli Stroetmann, Karl Stroetmann: #SmartHealthSystems: Digitization strategies in international comparison . Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh 2018 ( bertelsmann-stiftung.de [PDF; accessed on May 2, 2019]).
  19. ↑ Digital Health: Germany in penultimate place in a country comparison. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. November 29, 2018, accessed May 2, 2019 .
  20. ↑ German healthcare system weak in terms of digitization. In: Handelsblatt. November 29, 2018, accessed May 2, 2019 .