e-Health

India has drastically grown in terms of healthcare, and we have seen expansive development. We are also steadily reaching towards the goal of e-Health. However, by now, you must be wondering, what exactly is e-Health. Well let’s take a little detour.

 

What is e-Health

 

In lament terms, we can define e-health as the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to complement healthcare. You can also consider e-Health as a solution to the problem of healthcare in India. Some examples of e-Health are online services, mobile applications, service delivery and tracking, hospital information system (HIS) and online consultation.

 

Why e-Health Important

 

e-Health is a method of improving efficiency, access, quality, speed, and decision making in healthcare as well as encouraging disease prevention and wellness. Though you don’t realize, it every sector is becoming more digitalized day-by-day. Although technology may be a weakness for some, we can turn it into a valuable resource. Therefore, the concept of e-Health is a new-age adaptation of health that can light the way for a healthier nation and eventually a healthier world. e-Health is a way of looking the monster of illness in the eye and telling it that we are overcoming of it. This is because e-health means that everything will be available online for the doctor and the patient which is an end to tons of consuming and confusing paperwork. e-health acts as a health mirror for the country where the citizens can see the status of facilities in hospitals (like how many beds are available or how much blood is there in the blood banks or even the number of working ambulances).

 

Domains of e-Health

 

There are several domains of e-Health that I will briefly discuss in this blog but will be taken up in detail in other blogs.

 

Telemedicine: Telemedicine can be considered ‘healing at a distance.’ According to WHO, “telemedicine is defined as “the delivery of health care services, where distance is a critical factor, by all health care professionals using information and communication technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, research, and evaluation, and for the continuing education of health care providers, all in the interests of advancing the health of individuals and their communities”.

M-Health: M-Health is an abbreviation of mobile health and refers to the practice of medicine and public health that is supported by mobile phones.

P-Health: P-Health also known as personalized health, it refers to the use of predictive tools to evaluate health risks and to design personalized health plans to help patients mitigate risks, prevent disease and to treat it with precision if it occurs.

Clinical Information System (CIS): A clinical information system (CIS) is an information system designed specifically for use in the critical care environment, such as in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Big Data: Big Data is a field that treats ways to analyze, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software.

( By Anshika Saxena, Volunteer, Editorial Dept. Advanced Healthcare Foundation)