What is Personal eHealth?

Despite its imprecise definition, eHealth is a term that is widely used and is gaining growing acceptance within the healthcare community and among senior bureaucrats and politicians. Branham’s 2005 eHealth in Canada study identified two major elements of eHealth initiatives across Canada:

1. Digitization of healthcare data and the underlying processes that produce or consume this data.
2. Integration of healthcare data from various sources to create context specific views of relevant healthcare information.

Taking this observation into consideration, Branham defines eHealth as:

The digitization and integration of healthcare processes using Information and Communications Technology.

Personal eHealth focuses on those processes in which the individual receiving care or making decisions about the care that they will receive plays or can play an active role. A few examples of processes in which the individual can take an active role include:

• Booking an appointment.
• Researching a diagnosed disease and the care plans associated with that disease.
• Vital signs monitoring including blood pressure, pulse, and blood glucose levels.

It is important to note that despite the individual’s involvement in many healthcare processes, it is not always possible or practical for them to take an active role. An obvious example is surgery. Although the patient is present, they are a passive participant on whom the surgery is performed.