Page 18 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

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Overview of Issues

OVERVIEW OF eHEALTH
Janet M. Marchibroda, M.B.A.
Chief executie officer, eHealth initiatie and eHealth Foundation
Implementation of eHealth and health information technologies is
1
seen by many observers as an effective way to address current concerns
about the quality and safety of the U.S. health care system. Among those
concerns are the facts that U.S. adults receive only about half of recom-
mended health care services (McGlynn et al., 2003), that less than 50
percent of adults receive the preventive and screening tests called for in
guidelines for their age and sex (Commonwealth Fund, 2006), that pre-
ventable medical errors in hospitals result in around 100,000 deaths per
year (IOM, 2000), and that there are 1.5 million preventable adverse drug
events each year (IOM, 2007).
The rising costs of health care are another major concern that eHealth
may help address. By 2016, health care spending in the United States is
expected to increase from the current 16 percent of the gross domestic

1 There is an ongoing project devoted to determining definitions of various concepts in
eHealth and information technology, however, for purposes of this presentation the fol-
lowing definition applies. eHealth “involves simplifying and handling processes relating
to information, communication and transactions within and between health care institu-
tions and professionals by utilizing information and telecommunications technologies.”
(Deutsche Telekom, 2008).

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