eHealth Progress
October 6, 2006
In an editorial by Henry Potts of London, he raises the question, “Is E-health Progressing Faster Than E-health Researchers?” Some of the quotable answer includes: “Traditional healthcare, given its safety critical context, utilises an evidence base and a process of risk management that generally involves some sort of governance. These are conflicting trends: the great value of the Internet is how easy it is to make material available, but the strictures of safety and proof of efficacy run counter to that. How do we garner the benefits of the Internet – the democratization of production and distribution that has produced so much content – while maintaining safe and good practice?”
And in an acknowledgment to social networking, “Beyond healthcare, there are many more innovations that draw on user-generated content and the Internet’s democratization of production and distribution. The “killer application” in e-health will perhaps be something that can marry the democratized nature of MySpace or Wikipedia with the safety critical nature of healthcare.”
These conflicting values of control and freedom are particularly acute in web-based consumer directed healthcare. Web 2.0 values need a way to take root within healthcare.
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