Abstract
The rising of a new technological era has brought within it opportunities and threats the health systems worldwide have to deal with. In such a changed scenario the role of decision-makers is crucial to identify the real and perceived needs of the population and those areas on intervention in which eHealth can help to improve the quality and efficacy of care. Therefore, in-depth analysis of the state of the art both in industrialized and in developing countries is paramount. Many in fact are constraints that mine the designing and implementation of electronic systems for health. Only if policymakers understand the real implication of eHealth and the complexities of the human being, working model could be introduced. Otherwise the systems proposed will follow the same schemes that have produced failures so far. It implies also that the mutated role of the patient had to be known, together with his expectations and needs. Nevertheless, in a globalize world, a policy for eHealth have to consider also those factors that once did not strictly belong to the health context, ecology and a greener policy being some of those. In addition, as health has to be considered a universal value, the role of the developing world is today crucial: what advantages could technology bring to those areas in which the level of industrialization is still nominal? Yet, many are the opportunities that eHealth disclose to these settings, provided that a correct approach is followed, to avoid a waste of time and resources. At least, the future of eHealth has to be considered, so that long-term plans could be developed, so that the future and still unknown challenge for health could be promptly faced.
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- 1.
cfr. Acta from: 2nd NIRS-ETOILE Joint Symposium 2011 on Carborlon Therapy, 25–27 November 2011; Workshop: Hadron therapy in France, Lyon 28–29 November 2011; PHE-ICRT, Geneve February 2012
- 2.
In an anonymous way (forum, chat rooms) or in a public way (social networks).
- 3.
The legal implications of the medical practice “sometimes impose an aseptic approach to the patient, according to the rule: the less you overdo, the less could be used against you in a legal action or in a request for compensation. Nowadays that is not a minor matter, as for instance the increasing number of free-of-charge solicitors’ advertises demonstrate, many of them explicitly pointing out the keywords “medical negligence” as a major cause of claim for compensation. It means also that some patients use to “oversee” the action of the practitioner, waiting for some weak points or possible mistakes they can use in a possible request for money.
- 4.
Although it is true that in low-income countries people die because of diseases that can easly prevented and cured in industrialized countries, in the Western world people get ill and die because of pathologies that in the developing countries are not present or unknown. This is also a face of modernization that health policymakers have to deal with today.
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Capello, F., Luini, M.G.G. (2014). eHealth Policy. In: Gaddi, A., Capello, F., Manca, M. (eds) eHealth, Care and Quality of Life. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-5253-6_8
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