What Is eHealth (4): A Scoping Exercise to Map the Field

Abstract

Background Lack of consensus on the meaning of eHealth has led to uncertainty among academics, policymakers, providers and consumers. This project was commissioned in light of the rising profile of eHealth on the international policy agenda and the emerging UK National Programme for Information Technology (now called Connecting for Health) and related developments in the UK National Health Service.Objectives To map the emergence and scope of eHealth as a topic and to identify its place within the wider health informatics field, as part of a larger review of research and expert analysis pertaining to current evidence, best practice and future trends.Methods Multiple databases of scientific abstracts were explored in a nonsystematic fashion to assess the presence of eHealth or conceptually related terms within their taxonomies, to identify journals in which articles explicitly referring to eHealth are contained and the topics covered, and to identify published definitions of the concept. The databases were Medline (PubMed), the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the Cochrane Database (including Dare, Central, NHS Economic Evaluation Database [NHS EED], Health Technology Assessment [HTA] database, NHS EED bibliographic) and ISTP (now known as ISI proceedings).We used the search query, “Ehealth OR e-health OR e*health”. The timeframe searched was 1997-2003, although some analyses contain data emerging subsequent to this period. This was supplemented by iterative searches of Web-based sources, such as commercial and policy reports, research commissioning programmes and electronic news pages. Definitions extracted from both searches were thematically analyzed and compared in order to assess conceptual heterogeneity.Results The term eHealth only came into use in the year 2000, but has since become widely prevalent. The scope of the topic was not immediately discernable from that of the wider health informatics field, for which over 320000 publications are listed in Medline alone, and it is not explicitly represented within the existing Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) taxonomy. Applying eHealth as narrative search term to multiple databases yielded 387 relevant articles, distributed across 154 different journals, most commonly related to information technology and telemedicine, but extending to such areas as law. Most eHealth articles are represented on Medline. Definitions of eHealth vary with respect to the functions, stakeholders, contexts and theoretical issues targeted. Most encompass a broad range of medical informatics applications either specified (eg, decision support, consumer health information) or presented in more general terms (eg, to manage, arrange or deliver health care). However the majority emphasize the communicative functions of eHealth and specify the use of networked digital technologies, primarily the Internet, thus differentiating eHealth from the field of medical informatics. While some de...

Supporting health-related parenting: A scoping review of programs assisted by the Internet and related technologies

“…Considering the period during which eHealth interventions were developed (Pagliari et al, 2005), studies from January 2000 to the present date (February 2017) were included. Search terms included parent*intervention OR parent*program OR parent* training AND child* OR pediatric AND health OR health promotion OR prevention OR chronic condition OR chronic illness OR chronic disease AND web-supported OR internet OR internet-based OR technology* OR online OR app OR smartphone OR telehealth OR web-based.…”

“…Most of these interventions are delivered individually or in small groups and use a face-toface format. Since the turn of the century, several parenting programs have been proposed using eHealth interventions to help overcome major obstacles associated with low adherence rates, problems with accessibility, and high costs of parenting interventions (Pagliari et al, 2005).…”

How Can eHealth Technology Address Challenges Related to Multimorbidity? Perspectives from Patients with Multiple Chronic Conditions

“…13,14 eHealth technology comprises a range of patient-facing tools-information technology that engages patients in their health care--such as personal health records, web-based disease-management programs, telehealth devices (applications that deliver health-related services and information via telecommunications technologies), secure messaging applications, and health-related mobile applications. 15 Patients with chronic conditions are increasingly using eHealth technology to Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11606-015-3222-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. support their self-management, 16,17 and some now turn to online resources as a primary source of information.…”

Patients at the Centre: Methodological Considerations for Evaluating Evidence from Health Interventions Involving Patients Use of Web-Based Information Systems~!2009-08-03~!2010-01-12~!2010-09-14~!

“…However, the increasing penetration of the Internet and access and use of on-line health information by patients and citizens has made the use of other methods for evaluating the impact of information systems become more widely accepted [23,[26][27][28][29]. Similarly as the health information systems themselves have evolved the focus of evaluation has moved from hardware and systems architectures towards the end-user where new techniques and evaluation criteria focused on usability, interfaces and content have been utilised [30][31][32][33]. This stated, there continues to be a need to improve the quality of reporting of evaluation studies [34].…”