The Patient's Perspective - empowerment or bewilderment eHealth: Background, Today's Implementation and Future Trends

Abstract The analysis will adequately take into account the overall context including social, ethic and technological issues. It draws a “big picture” on where we are considering different regions of the world and different needs. The contribution outlines to what extent eHealth represents true innovation, that means having positive impact on the society, making better the life of citizens in a broad sense. Starting from today added value applications we will try to identify future trends and goals. Foreword How can we measure success in eHealth? Is it a mere question of money saving or it involves more? It is foreseeable a win-win strategy, better service, more success stories, less costs? Is eHealth an opportunity in order to bridge the healthcare gap around the world? What can we expect from virtual laboratories and electronic patient folders? Does online medical services impact on patient privacy? Last but not least electronic patient folders last forever as usually requested by law? Moreover very often we hear of user centred design, interaction design and the positive effects that good “design” can have, especially for the industrial products and on line services, but what effect can exercise a proper design "indirectly" on the user? How much can do the "design" for our welfare, to help us feel better, in our home or even exert a positive influence on our overall health? Healthcare sector cannot be considered as any other “eSector”. What do patients, or more simply Citizens, expect accessing healthcare premises or services? What is really relevant for them in the different regions of the world (e.g. on line solution in order to check if a medicine is ”original” or a dangerous clone)? Do the “big brother” effect due to remote monitoring and tele-medicine play a positive role in such a context? What are the indicators of success of the operation, how do we determine the degree of satisfaction of the user? By “commercial” success, the content of dedicated interviews, the express appreciation? The expectation of life in the last century has significantly grown up; if we consider this aspect as a performance indicator we can probably agree on a positive trend. Performance measuring in the healthcare sector may be related to a set of parameters having as the main one the effect on the patient. Apart from this we can consider organisational issues, time and money savings, information and knowledge sharing and more. Applications and services will cover information, monitoring, education, safety and more.