Main description:

This innovative reference examines how consumer health informatics (CHI) can transform healthcare systems stressed by staffing shortages and budget constraints and challenged by patients taking a more active role in their care. It situates CHI as vital to upgrading healthcare service delivery, detailing the relationship between health information technologies and quality healthcare, and outlining what stakeholders need to learn for health IT systems to function effectively. Wide-ranging content identifies critical issues and answers key questions at the consumer, practitioner, administration, and staff levels, using examples from diverse conditions, countries, technologies, and specialties. In this framework, the benefits of CHI are seen across service domains, from individual patients and consumers to healthcare systems and global health entities.

Included in the coverage:

Use of video technology in an aged care environment
A context-aware remote health monitoring service for improved patient care
Accessibility issues in interoperable sharing of electronic health records: physician's perspective
Managing gestational diabetes with mobile web-based reporting of glucose readings

An organizing vision perspective for developing and adopting e-health solutions

An ontology of consumer health informatics

Contemporary Consumer Health Informatics combines blueprint and idea book for public health and health informatics students, healthcare professionals, physicians, medical administrators, managers, and IT practitioners.

Contents:

Preface.- Foreword.- Section I: Defining the Discipline.- What Is Consumer Health Informatics.- The Landscape.- Section II: Technologies.- Remote Monitoring and Mobile Apps.- Social Media and Web 2.0.- Personal Health Record.- Architecture and Infrastructure Requirements.- Section III: Design.- Designing for the Consumer.- Design Methods.- Section IV: Roles and Responsibilities.- Connecting with Medical Systems and Healthcare Providers.- Policy, Public Health, and Economics.- Quality Control, Security and Privacy.- Section V: On the Horizon: Perspectives on the Future.- The Future: Research Issues.- The Future: Policy and Funding.- The Future: Research Perspective, Grantor Perspective, Vendor Perspective.- Epilogue: Lessons, Take Aways and Recommendations.- Appendix: Case Vignettes.