Social Media: The Evolution of e-Health Services
The chapter analyses e-health services provided by different Social Media (collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual games and virtual social worlds and video-chat) and introduces a Hybrid Cloud E-health Services
- PDF / 289,295 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.36 x 666.15 pts Page_size
- 14 Downloads / 213 Views
Abstract The chapter analyses e-health services provided by different Social Media (collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual games and virtual social worlds and video-chat) and introduces a Hybrid Cloud E-health Services architecture (HCLES) able to provide open, interoperable, scalable, and extensible services for all the e-health activities. It integrates the potentialities of Skype for a direct communication and synchronous data transmission among people with the cloud perspective of Social Media services.
1 Introduction In the last years, the professional use of Social Media is growing more and more in different fields such as: business [1], learning [2], scientific research [3], tourism [4], etc. In health field advances in Social Media are changing the way healthcare services are provided and the term “e-health” is broadly used to describe this evolution. There is not a consensus on the definition of e-Health concept. Eysenbach [5] provides the following: “e-health is an emerging field in the intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related technologies”. Marconi [6] defines e-health as “the application of Internet and other related technologies in the healthcare industry to improve the access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of clinical and business processes utilized by healthcare organizations, practitioners, patients, and consumers in an effort to improve the health status of patients”. A similar definition is given in [7] “e-health is the use of Internet technology by the public, health workers, and others to access T. Guzzo • A. D’Andrea () • F. Ferri • P. Grifoni IRPPS-CNR, via Palestro 32, 00185 Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] S. ¸ Gündüz-Ö˘güdücü and A.S. ¸ Etaner-Uyar (eds.), Social Networks: Analysis and Case Studies, Lecture Notes in Social Networks, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-1797-2__10, © Springer-Verlag Wien 2014
233
234
T. Guzzo et al.
health and lifestyle information, services and support; it encompasses telemedicine, telecare, etc.” In Akeh and Morfaw [8] e-health is defined as “the ability to use Internet technology to provide health services and deliver care to individuals from geographically dispersed locations”. Improving access to e-health has been receiving particular attention since the first World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) in 1994. In 2005, the World Health Assembly recognized e-health as the way to achieve cost-effective and secure use of Social Media technologies for health. The use of Social Media for e-health services can offer important benefits mainly in three different areas: • Productivity: cost reduction and avoidance, increased productivity, reduced duplication of tests/procedures and impacts on success of reform or change initiative. • Access: an easier access to health services main
Data Loading...
