This book will help health system decision-makers identify key policy issues in developing an e-health strategy, and make the right decisions about the way forward. It can be used in workshops with a team of people from many different backgrounds, such as senior civil servants, doctors, nurses, healthcare managers, ICT managers and ICT suppliers.

Worldwide the application of information and communication technologies to support national health-care services is rapidly expanding and increasingly important. This is especially so at a time when all health systems face stringent economic challenges and greater demands to provide more and better care especially to those most in need. The National eHealth Strategy Toolkit is an expert practical guide that provides governments their ministries and stakeholders with a solid foundation and method for the development and implementation of a national eHealth vision action plan and monitoring fram.

A growing, aging population; the rise to epidemic proportions of various chronic diseases; competing, often overlapping medical technologies; and of course, skyrocketing costs compounded by waste and inefficiency - these are just a few of the multifarious challenges currently facing healthcare delivery. An unexpected source of solutions is being imported from the manufacturing sector: lean thinking. Lean Principles for Healthcare presents a conceptual framework, management principles, and practical tools for professionals tasked with designing and implementing modern, streamlined healthcare systems or overhauling faulty ones. Focusing on core components such as knowledge management, e-health, patient-centeredness, and collaborative care, chapters illustrate lean concepts in action across specialties (as diverse as nursing, urology, and emergency care) and around the globe. Extended case examples show health systems responding to consumer needs and provider realities with equal efficiency and effectiveness, and improved quality and patient outcomes. Further, contributors tackle the gamut of technological, medical, cultural, and business issues, among them: Initiatives of service-oriented architecture towards performance improvement Adapted lean thinking for emergency departments Lean thinking in dementia care through smart assistive technology Supporting preventive healthcare with persuasive services Value stream mapping for lean healthcare A technology mediated solution to reduce healthcare disparities Geared toward both how lean ideas can be carried out and how they are being used successfully in the real world, Lean Principles for Healthcare not only brings expert knowledge to healthcare managers and health services researchers but to all who have an interest in superior healthcare delivery.

This guide provides resources for the planning and implementation of health systems in Pacific island countries to support improved decision-making and service delivery. With increased internet connectivity, Pacific island countries have more opportunities to connect remote health facilities for greater information exchange. This guide draws on experiences from Pacific island countries that have already invested in digital health and brings together practical tools and resources to support all stages of digital health planning and implementation. It includes extensive contributions from practitioners, government staff, and development partners in the Pacific health sector.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the social and technological context from which eHealth applications have arisen, the psychological principles on which they are based, and the key development and evaluation issues relevant to their successful intervention. Integrating how eHealth applications can be used for both mental and physical health issues, it presents a complete guide to what eHealth means in theory, as well as how it can be used in practice. Inspired by the principles and structure of the CeHRes Roadmap, a multidisciplinary framework that combines and uses aspects from approaches such as human-centred design, persuasive technology and business modelling, the book first examines the theoretical foundations of eHealth and then assesses its practical application and assessment. Including case studies, a glossary of key terms, and end of chapter summaries, this ground-breaking book provides a holistic overview of one of the most important recent developments in healthcare. It will be essential reading for students, researchers and professionals across the fields of health psychology, public health and design technology.

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

Roadmap to Successful Digital Health Ecosystems: A Global Perspective presents evidence-based solutions found on adopting open platforms, standard information models, technology neutral data repositories, and computable clinical data and knowledge (ontologies, terminologies, content models, process models, and guidelines), resulting in improved patient, organizational, and global health outcomes. The book helps engaging countries and stakeholders take action and commit to a digital health strategy, create a global environment and processes that will facilitate and induce collaboration, develop processes for monitoring and evaluating national digital health strategies, and enable learnings to be shared in support of WHO's global strategy for digital health. The book explains different perspectives and local environments for digital health implementation, including data/information and technology governance, secondary data use, need for effective data interpretation, costly adverse events, models of care, HR management, workforce planning, system connectivity, data sharing and linking, small and big data, change management, and future vision. All proposed solutions are based on real-world scientific, social, and political evidence. - Provides a roadmap, based on examples already in place, to develop and implement digital health systems on a large-scale that are easily reproducible in different environments - Addresses World Health Organization (WHO)-identified research gaps associated with the feasibility and effectiveness of various digital health interventions - Helps readers improve future decision-making within a digital environment by detailing insights into the complexities of the health system - Presents evidence from real-world case studies from multiple countries to discuss new skills that suit new paradigms

A new addition to the successful telehealth series,Telehealth in the Developing Worldaims to balance the relative lack of published information on successful telehealth solutions in the developing world.

The World Health Organization's (WHO) strategy on eHealth focuses on strengthening health systems in countries; fostering public-private partnerships in ICT research and development for health; supporting capacity building for eHealth application in member states; and the development and use of norms and standards. Success in these areas is predicated on a fifth strategic direction: investigating, documenting and analyzing the impact of eHealth and promoting better understanding by disseminating information. To that end, WHO undertook a global survey on eHealth with which to garner baseline data on the current state of eHealth. Executed between mid-2005 and mid-2006, it represents the first attempt to examine eHealth from a regional as well as global perspective. Developed and implemented by the Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe), the survey focused on processes and outcomes in key eHealth action lines previously identified by the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS), which are supported by WHO as an overall framework for action.--Publisher's description.