The eHealth marketplace
The extraordinary developments that are occurring in such fields as computing, communications and medical technologies are now making possible long-foreseen advances in telemedicine and telecare. The convergance of these technologies along with those associated with information management have lead to much wider benefits, now encompassed in the tern eHealth.
On this website, we aim to publish information about these developments, and the activities of the UK eHealth Association, and other organisations and individuals, in the UK and worldwide.
By this means, we aim to help professionals achieve the most efficient use of resources available for the provision of health services, through the use of more technology and the new methodologies that are being developed.
Why not review the information, published here, about our news and events and the benefits of membership of the Association?
Feel free to review our activities, suggest ideas for development of the site or contact us now. If you are, or would like to be, involved in this exciting field then this site is for you.
eHealth now
eHealth is a wide and fast-growing field with many implications on how healthcare will be delivered in the future. If you're new to the field of eHealth would simply like to know what it's all about, start from For the public. If you're a telecommunications or healthcare professional who is interested in how telemedicine might affect you, or you would like a more technical discussion of the subject, start from For the professional.
eHealth for the future
eHealth is likely to change delivery of medical and social care beyond all recognition. The technology is developing at a staggering pace and there will be developments we have not yet even dreamt of. Over the next few years, as eHealth is deployed more widely, one of the main challenges will be to manage the change that this will cause. There will be new ways of working which will cut across traditional boundaries. The boundaries between primary, secondary and social care will become blurred and eventually disappear. Medical and nursing staff will collaborate in new ways, with areas of responsibility being redefined.
There will be need to train and retrain staff on an ongoing basis. Some staff will need to relocate as, for example, some hospital departments become smaller and more care is delivered in the community. The days of paper based medical records and X-rays being on film are numbered. Staff in Medical Records departments are more likely to be running quality control programmes on electronic records than hunting for missing notes. A major change will be the increase in community based care, driven in part by the need to support an increasingly ageing population. The aged are large users of medical care. Most wish to remain at home rather than be in an institutional setting and eHealth will assist in this. eHealth can enable a patient's home to become a virtual hospital ward. Vital signs can be transmitted to monitoring centres, which can detect possible problems. A nurse, based in the monitoring centre could be available 24 hours a day to provide reassurance and advice. A GP or specialist could be contacted if there are signs causing concern. The need for hospital or nursing home care can therefore be minimised.
Electronic records will be developed in a way that makes them accessible, to those authorised to see them, at any time, from any location. Our medical history could also be stored in our multi-purpose "credit card". Integration of interactive digital television, computers and the Internet is likely to change how we access medical care. We will expect quality medical information to be available round the clock, from the comfort of our own home. How will the NHS adapt to this demand? Will patients with long-term health problems feed information from portable monitors into a medical channel at home, rather than visit a hospital clinic? Will facilities exist to allow us to use the home system to call up a relative who is in hospital and undertake routine virtual visits, to see someone who may be too far away to permit a face to face visit?
Developments in portable telephones will mean that mobile videotelephony becomes routine. Such technology has obvious applications for delivery of health and social care. Work is ongoing into incorporating health-monitoring devices into clothing. Link these to your videophone and no matter where you are, you could gain access to high quality medical advice. There will be considerable challenges posed by developments outlined above and by many others. The globalisation of communications will require standards to be developed to permit international eHealth services. Issues such as data protection, legal status and licensing will require international agreements. For the individual and the state development of new services will pose challenges, but will also offer exciting opportunities to improve health care dramatically. At first we will do things differently, but the major benefits will come when we exploit these new opportunities fully and do different things differently.
eHealth for professionals
Current eHealth activities can be classified according to the technology used, the type of activity or the target group. One of the most important aspects of classification is the distinction between real time and store and forward. In real time eHealth, the classic example of which is videoconsultation, the interaction between the participants is "live" and they can interact immediately. The advantage of this approach is that it enables optimum transfer of information between the participants. The disadvantages are that it is logistically difficult to manage large-scale services and they tend to be relatively expensive. Store and forward eHealth is less expensive and easier to manage as there is no "live" interaction. One participant gathers information (text, data, images, etc) in electronic form and sends it to the other participant, who views it at a subsequent convenient time and reports back. The classic example here is dermatology second opinions. Choice as to which of the above approaches is preferable varies with the type of service required; neither is universally preferable.
Below is listed a selection of current eHealth activities, listed by their primary location. The list is not intended to be comprehensive and details of other services will be found in numerous locations across this site. UK eHealth Association members can access details of the various applications that other members are running by visiting the Members' forum on this site. New deployments of telemedicine are occurring with increasing rapidity. Telemedicine will be part of the movement towards a model of care based around the individual, rather than around institutions, a topic discussed in Telemedicine for the Future.
eHealth for the public
Traditionally to access medical care or advice, you have had to travel to the doctor or hospital. The more complex or rare the problem, the further it has been necessary to go.
eHealth, by making use of computers and telephone technologies, now makes it possible for an increasing range of medical services to be available locally. An example of a current telemedicine service is NHS Direct, has been extended to provide advice services to the whole country.
In some parts of the country traditional hospital based outpatient clinics are being replaced with nurse-run clinics in GP practices. The nurses talk to the patient, collect all the information required on a computer and send this "electronic patient record" over the phone lines to a specialist. The specialist could be located anywhere. The specialist views the record (which could include photographs, X-rays, ECGs or other details as well as text) and uses his computer to send a report back to the patient's GP.
Minor injury units are now being linked to trauma centres. If you attend such a unit, the nurse can send X-rays over the phone line, for a radiologist to view and report back. She can also videoconference with a Consultant in the trauma centre in order to discuss how to manage an injury.
These sorts of approaches enable care and advice to be made available much more locally and often more quickly than the traditional approaches.
The range of eHealth services is increasing rapidly and will become a core feature of the NHS. Access to expertise regardless of where you live should help to ensure fair provision of services for all. Access to good quality health information over the Internet, digital TV and via multimedia kiosks will give us all an opportunity to maintain better health.