Focusing on the socio-technical aspects of digital health, this book examines the interplay between technology, individuals, and processes. It highlights how these elements work together to enable effective health solutions, providing insights into the critical roles each facet plays in the evolving landscape of healthcare.
This innovative reference explores how consumer health informatics (CHI) can enhance healthcare systems facing staffing shortages and budget constraints while addressing the trend of patients taking a more active role in their care. It positions CHI as essential for improving healthcare service delivery, highlighting the connection between health information technologies and quality care. The text outlines necessary knowledge for stakeholders to ensure effective health IT system functionality. It covers a wide range of critical issues and answers key questions at various levels, including consumer, practitioner, administration, and staff, using examples from diverse conditions, countries, technologies, and specialties. The benefits of CHI are illustrated across service domains, impacting individual patients, healthcare systems, and global health entities. Topics include the use of video technology in aged care, context-aware remote health monitoring for better patient outcomes, accessibility challenges in sharing electronic health records from a physician’s viewpoint, mobile web-based management of gestational diabetes, a vision for e-health solution development, and an ontology of consumer health informatics. This work serves as both a blueprint and idea book for public health and health informatics students, healthcare professionals, physicians, medical administrators, managers, and IT practitioners.