Information technology can enhance quality in regional health delivery.

OBJECTIVES a) The use of information technology (IT) based solutions for quality health delivery in regional health information networks and the study of the enabling factors for their use in a regional health care network from key classes of users such as the medical personnel and the citizens. b) Identification of potential technologies for usage from all citizens and health providers in a regional environment, in all aspects of everyday life. c) Presentation of a generic user model for reference when developing and assessing IT based health delivery solutions. METHODS After defining the major questions to be addressed, an overview of tele-health and tele-medicine technologies and solutions currently available shall be presented. Further, a generic user model applied to the use of IT based regional health delivery solutions both for the daily life and home care, and for research and clinical routine purposes are presented. Enabling technologies for integration of different IT modules, medical data processing and management procedures and the wireless application protocol (WAP) technology is discussed. RESULTS Different levels of user applications are presented such as mobile telephony driven health information monitoring and systems integrating electronic health care records with multimedia medical information management and processing modules. CONCLUSIONS Although IT solutions are advanced and continue to evolve, still the user acceptance and user friendliness issues are unresolved. Mobile telecommunication solutions however may hold the key for wide scale implementation of IT solutions in regional health information networks and increased quality of health services.

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