Developing An E Health Strategy

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.

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

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.

BACKGROUND: New Zealand has a long history of developing and disseminating national plans and strategies to implement information technology (IT) in the healthcare sector. Health reforms post-2008 resulted in the creation of the National Health IT Board. In their new role, they published an influential iteration of an eHealth strategy in 2010 - the National Health Information Technology Plan. The district distribution of healthcare provision and responsibility in New Zealand increased the likelihood of disparate uptake of eHealth initiatives throughout the country. The National Health IT Plan was implemented with the goal of reducing that disparity to enable a national integrated healthcare model. AIM This inductive, interpretive research study identifies major factors impacting the implementation of the National Health IT Plan in New Zealand by examining stakeholder perceptions of issues that facilitated and/or hindered the implementation process, with the aim of generating a theory in the substantive area. METHOD: An iterative grounded theory methodology was used to guide data collection, analysis, and reporting. Data was collected from two sources: first, from a public online discussion forum created to garner stakeholder feedback from the draft National Health IT Plan prior to its release. The data collected and analysed from the first phase was used to inform the interview schedule employed in the second phase of data collection. In the second phase, data was collected from interviews with 30 health sector stakeholders over a 10-month period. Analysis methods utilising the grounded theory process resulted in the emergence of a substantive theory grounded in the empirical data. FINDINGS: Through the inductive grounded theory analytical process, four final categories (combined to form the mnemonic GEAR) emerged indicating the interrelationship between key factors that impacted implementation of the National Health IT Plan - Government and Leadership, Engagement of Stakeholders, Aligning the Plan in Context, and Regionalisation to Sustain Implementation. The Government and Leadership category relates to the impact of the direction, control and leadership at central level. The Engagement of Stakeholders category represents the process and methods by which stakeholders were targeted to influence buy-in to implementation. The Aligning the Plan in Context category outlines the impact of the national health sector context and culture. The Regionalisation to Sustain Implementation category reflects the impact of the existing District Health Board structure on implementation and the move for regional collaboration to promote long-term sustainability of eHealth initiatives. CONCLUSIONS: The similarities and contentions that existed between the differing perspectives of the interviewees wove the relationship between the concepts within the categories. This interrelationship, grounded in the data, forms the substantive theory on the influencing factors on eHealth strategy implementation in New Zealand. The presence of the four categories together contributed to influencing the implementation of the National Health IT Plan. Leadership at central level played a facilitating role in its implementation, and forward steps were taken in propagation and uptake of eHealth initiatives in the healthcare sector. However, issues of regional collaboration and resource allocation bound to a lack of governance structures hindered aspects of forward movement. Nonetheless, a significant artefact in catalysing progressive changes and engaging stakeholders was the use of strategic tools, used to frame a scope of parameters and to disseminate key aspects during each phase of implementation. As a tenet of grounded theory, these findings were extended with the literature to produce theoretical and conceptual links. It is suggested that a multi-level approach to eHealth strategy implementation requires at least four operative elements: a national leading organisation with a clear strategic vision and responsibilities, targeted tools to influence stakeholder buy-in, contextual alignment with the wider health sector, and clear governance structures to support collaboration at local and national level. KEYWORDS: eHealth, health information technology, health policy, health plan implementation.

There is great enthusiasm over the use of emerging interactive health information technologies-often referred to as eHealth-and the potential these technologies have to improve the quality, capacity, and efficiency of the health care system. However, many doctors, advocacy groups, policy makers and consumers are concerned that electronic health systems might help individuals and communities with greater resources while leaving behind those with limited access to technology. In order to address this problem, the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Health Literacy held a workshop to explore the current status of communication technology, the challenges for its use in populations with low health literacy, and the strategies for increasing the benefit of these technologies for populations with low health literacy. The summary of the workshop, "Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First," includes participants' comments on these issues.

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.

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.

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.

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 framework. All countries, whatever their level of development, can adapt the Toolkit to suit their own circumstances. Representing one of the most significant collaborations in recent years between the World Health Organization and the International Telecommunication Union, the Toolkit is a landmark in understanding what eHealth is, what it can do, and why and how it should be applied to health care today.

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.