- A great number of Internet sites are dedicated to helping consumers find the information they need to make decisions about their health and health care.
Patients are creating online communities that provide peer support, information on the latest research, and personal stories about their experiences.
Health care professionals are using the Internet for research, to get access to the latest information in their field, to consult with their colleagues, and to keep in touch with their patients.
And insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies also have their own web sites.
The driving forces that have push Internet into health care are as follow (Mary and Robert, 1999):
21st Century Health Care Consumers: More than half of world health care consumers have access to a computer at home or at work. These consumers are more actively involved in making decisions about the health care they receive. They will expect high levels of choice, control, customer service, interaction with their health care providers, and access to information.
Consumer Experiences with Other Industries, particularly the responsiveness and choice they get from Internet shopping and the interaction they get using electronic mail, were the expectations they hope to get from health and health care services.
The Characteristics of the Internet: It is inexpensive, easy to use, provides a diversity of health care information, and opens its users to a global network of people with common interests.
Market Forces in Health Care: Web technologies such as intranets, extranets, and the Internet serve as a low-cost, rapidly deployable platform for disseminating information across vertically and horizontally integrated health care organizations. Competitive health care organizations use the Web as a channel to promote their services. Managed care increases the diversity and urgency of information flow, which is possible through Internet.
With computer, television, telephone, telemedicine systems and other technologies being integrated into a single interactive communications platform, health care professionals will use it to access patient records, videoconference with colleagues and patients, link to library, financial and administrative programs and systems and attend to all their personal requirements too (Peter, 2008), which will lead to low cost, high quality telemedicine where-by patients will avoid unnecessary travel from rural settings to major medical centers and patients will accomplish in single office visits than often requires multiple visits. The primary care clinicians will have expert consultation delivered to them in their offices (Edward and James, 2006).
With remote consultation which gives quick and easy electronic access between clinical providers to discuss patient cases will improve access to expert patient care and enhance patient satisfaction (Edward and James, 2006). The Internet 2 or related networks, will have video eHealth activities on every desktop in the world which will spring up an international competition in health care. Patients seeking opinion from the world experts will rather go to a cheaper treatment by equally qualified overseas doctors than the higher cost local doctors (Peter, 2008).
The integrated health records will become a virtual health record for each patient. It is aimed to be secured, treated with respect, confidential and released to providers only with the patient's permission or during times of medical emergency. This will solved the problem of patients having multiple medical records scattered through-out the offices of individual physicians they have consulted or hospital medical record rooms they have visited (Edward and James, 2006).
The understanding of protein structure or nucleic acid to have a specified function has led to the invention of a particular drug to be used to treat a medical condition which will ultimately lead to drug creation process to build biological custom materials to reverse or determine a pathological process (Edward and James, 2006) and with the concept of building a system that can transit smells or signals identifying smells and an ideal of allowing sounds to transmit straight into our brains, and also the patients wearing mini-computers that understand the rhythm, inflection, tone and emphasis of speech which respond in a human sounding manner, and in addition to other monitoring devices with outputs electronically shared in real time via wireless monitors or sensors worn in clothes and connected to the internet or monitoring services (Peter, 2008), we will reach the goal of personalized healthcare system. The individual citizen will be the center of the healthcare delivery process and daily treatment.
For instance, the depression monitor will transmit a message to the doctor, letting him know to contact the patient. The patient might have heart being monitored, a temperature monitor and brain electrical activity being recorded (Peter, 2008). This shows that Health care has discovered the Internet.
References:
Peter Yellowlees MD, (2008). Your Health In The Information Age - How you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together, 165 - 175.
Mary Cain and Robert Mittman, (June 1999). The Future of the Internet in Health Care: A Five-Year Forecast. http://www.informatics-review.com/thoughts/future.html
The full report can be found on the Foundation web site at: http://www.chcf.org/documents/intreport.pdf
Edward H. Shortliffe, James J. Cimino, (2006). Biomedical Informatics - Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine, 830 - 834.
Josema Cavanillas - Director - Atos Research and Innovation, (Sept 18 2008). Personalised Health and Future Internet. Norfolk - Virginia. http://www.es.atosorigin.com/NR/rdonlyres/4B0C8A1A-F55D-4BCE-AEFB-3E71EBD01661/0/080918v01JMCpHealth2008_Virginia.pdf
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