Consumer health informatics is a part of medical informatics that has as first priority to analyse the interaction between Information Technology (IT) and health consumers. Consumer health informatics applications are designed to interact directly with the customer with or without the essential presence of healthcare. This field of virtual informatics tended to be developed by people other than clinical professions. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of best practices and methods for customers' health information and to describe the best interactive visual learning tools for health education. Consumer health informatics is an interdisciplinary field much as other informatics fields. Some disciplines that may find consumer health informatics valuable include public health, nursing, health education and communication sciences. It is important that organisations such as medical universities and governmental agencies to provide trustworthy high-quality health information on internet and work harder and create practical health education tools.
Recent statistics show that the World Wide Web has now grown to over 100 million sites: a phenomenal expansion in only 15 years (Mulligan 2007). It has been estimated that there are 100,000 sites offering health related information (Wilson 2002). As the amount of health information increases, the public find it increasingly difficult to decide what to accept and what to reject (Burgess 2007). Searching for information on the internet is both deceptively easy and the same time frustratingly difficult (Kiley 2002). The challenge for consumers is to find high quality, relevant information as quickly as possible. There has been ongoing debate about the quality of information aimed at patients and the general public and opinions differ on how it can be improved (Stepperd 1999). The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the different perspectives on information quality and to review the main criteria for assessing the quality of health information on the internet. Pointers are provided to enable both clinicians and patients find high quality information sources. An understanding of these issues should help health professionals and patients to make effective use of the internet.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide innovative knowledge and creative ideas of improving quality of care and to explore how risk management and Knowledge transfer and quality assurance can improve health care. Under careful consideration, our purpose is to summarize which factors improve and promote the quality of care and which factors diminish quality. There are forms of ongoing efforts to make performance better. Quality improvement must be a long-term, continuous effort, reducing errors and providing a safe trust environment for health professionals and patients. After reading this chapter, you should know the answer to these questions: What role can risk management and knowledge transfer play in quality of care? How can risk management and knowledge transfer work together? What are the factors that improve risk management and quality assurance in health care? How does knowledge transfer support, inform, and improve care?
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