What is eHealth?

Delivery of care to patients by health care professionals
Health-related information
Trading Health Products

In the context of eEurope, the concept of "eHealth" is used to describe the application of information and communications technologies (ICT) across the whole range of functions which, one way or another, affect the health of citizens and patients.

Delivery of care to patients by health care professionals

A wide range of potential applications of information and communications technologies are now available in the health field and have been implemented to varying degrees within Member States. These include systems ranging from the purely administrative to those for care delivery:

Hospitals:

1. Scheduling systems (booking, human resource management)
2. Logistics (supply of medicinal products], bed management and patient transfer
3. Management information systems (DRGs, resource management))
4. Hospital administration systems (accounting, inventory management, payroll)
5. Patient administration systems
6. Laboratory information systems
7. Radiology information systems
8. Pharmacy systems
9. Nursing systems
10. Networked Services such as 
    electronic messaging between the hospital and other healthcare actors for communication of clinical and administrative data
    Telemedicine such as telepathology services, teleconsultation for remote areas

Primary Care:

Use of computers by General Practioners (Family Doctors), pharmacists and dentists for patient management, medical records and electronic prescribing.

Home Care:

Includes care services which are delivered by home care professionals via telecommunications to a patient in the home. Such teleconsultation may include remote vital signs monitoring systems which enable the patient to receive targeted treatment and medication without the need to visit an out-patient department or to occupy a hospital bed. Examples of such applications are particularly well developed in diabetes medicine, asthma monitoring and home dialysis systems.

A fundamental building block of these applications is the Electronic Health Record (EHR) which also allows the sharing of medical records between care providers across medical disciplines and institutions. 

The EHR in turn facilitates teleconsultation between care providers on a given patient for the purposes of second medical opinions, as well as teleconsultation by a health practitioner linked to the patient at home. Its use gives rise to further possibilities of advanced, networked, applications, such as electronic prescribing, which has the potential for more efficient working between doctor and pharmacist and the possibility of cutting down unnecessary errors and monitoring for iatrogenic effects.

Health-related information

An important potential use of electronic health-related information is continuous medical education.

Another new but important trend is the retrieval of health and medical information by citizens.

The internet also provides a useful medium not only for commercial information providers such as publishers, but also for official bodies seeking innovative ways to support public health education campaigns.

Trading Health Products

Electronic trading of health care goods such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices and the various ICT applications themselves is also on the increase. Here, a wider range of actors are involved, including software and hardware developers and support providers, telecommunications providers, official bodies accrediting applications, as well as the healthcare provider and the citizens in their role as commercial customers of such providers.

Questions or comments regarding this site?  Write to us at infso-ehealth@ec.europa.eu.

This page was last updated on 19/10/2009.