What is e-Health?

e-health is an emerging field in the intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related technologies. In a broader sense, the term characterizes not only a technical development, but also a state-of-mind, a way of thinking, an attitude, and a commitment for networked, global thinking, to improve health care locally, regionally, and worldwide by using information and communication technology.

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.