Category: nature of ehealth

  • Health care is not immune from innovation making jobs obsolete

    An interesting report from NPR.org, titled “The jobs of yesteryear: Obsolete occupations” got me thinking about what health care will look like in 10, 20, and 30 years from today. In the article/slideshow, several occupations are shown to be obsolete because they are no longer relevant due innovation. What all of these jobs had in…

  • Lessons from my father…

    My father’s most recent health experience and his visit to the ER has highlighted a few things about health and managing one’s care. Here are some things to take from my dad’s experience: eHealth Can Improve Coordination of Care: In this case, having a single care record could have prevented this mis-hap. Our family doc…

  • A new definition of health?

    There was an interesting editorial published this past week in the BMJ titled "How should health be defined?" by Jadad and O’Grady. The basic idea of the article is that while health was defined in 1948 by a panel of experts that changed our notions of health and illness, is it time for a new…

  • Worlds colliding…industry vs. academia

    It’s interesting to see how differently ehealth is viewed by academics and industry.  To one, ehealth is the potential of using new mediums to explore ideas and possibilities, while to the other, ehealth is more of a means to an end. For the past few years, I’ve been in the academic world exploring the limits…

  • Health care leaders lag on IT policy

    I came across an interesting news article talking about Newt Gingrich and his frustration with the health care system’s unwillingness to adopt IT. He gave a presentation at this year’s HIMSS conference. Basically, he tells a story of how the youngest in our society are at ease with technology, pushing for more technology, and yet…

  • Technological determinism and eHealth

    During a team meeting at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation yesterday, a point was raised about an assumption that we may all unconsciously have regarding the use of ICTs to improve health and health care (i.e., technological determinism). I stumbled across an interesting quotation by a newly appointed VP to an “eHealth” company called…