Discussion: ICT, eHealth, and Public Health Informatics Strategies

This discussion post addresses the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in public health, exploring telemedicine projects, mHealth applications, and eHealth strategies. It defines public health informatics and health informatics, highlighting their competencies and impact on ICT usage. The post also examines challenges in global eHealth governance, referencing pilot projects and their sustainability. The author discusses specific examples of eHealth implementations in different countries and identifies target populations for these technologies. Furthermore, the discussion considers the challenges of implementing eHealth in low-income countries and emphasizes the importance of training healthcare professionals and users for broader ICT access. References from various studies are provided to support the arguments.

Running head: HEALTHCARE
Healthcare
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Answer 1
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for public health is defined as
process of technical collaboration for the improvement in the public health system (WHO,
2019). Telemedicine is defined as branch ICT that deals with remote diagnosis and
subsequent treatment of the means by the use of the telecommunication technology. The main
population for telemedicine are the healthcare service users who reside in the remote areas
and the older adults who are unable to pay a visit to the hospital in a regular basis. ICT in the
domain of the telemedicine is used for the reduction in the rate of unwanted admission to the
hospital. It also helps to increase the overall health care access of the people who resides in
remote areas (Currie, 2009). Flodgren et al. (2015) are of the opinion that the use of the ICT
in telemedicine project helps to reduce the overall cost of care and helps to avoid the chances
of unwanted medical injury. Kruse et al. (2017) conducted a study in order to evaluate the
effectiveness of the ICT in the domain of telemedicine project. Kruse et al. (2017) mainly
used a systematic review approach for in order to evaluate the effectiveness of telemedicine.
The results highlighted that telemedicine is associated with reduction in the rate of
hospitalization or re-admissions. Other significant outcome of telemedicine project includes
decrease in the rate of mortality, improved overall outcome of care and improvement in the
cost-effectiveness of the overall care. As per the personal opinion, the implementation of the
telemedicine project helps in improving the overall patient outcome and thereby helping to
improve overall level of patients’ satisfaction.
Answer: 2
Public health informatics is application of informatics in different domains of public
health like surveillance, prevention, health promotion and preparedness. Health informatics
or health information systems use information and communication technology for organizing

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and analysing the health records in order to improve the overall health outcomes. It mainly
deals with resources, methods, devices for utilization, storage and retrieval and use of
information in health and medicine (Dixon et al., 2015). The difference between the
competency of the public health informatics and health informatics is in health informatics,
personal health records are handled. Thus, the healthcare professionals are required to secure
the privacy and confidentiality of the personal health information. The data here is encrypted
and do not have free access, only the healthcare professionals who are entitled for handling
that particular patient have the authority of handle patients’ information. On the other hand,
public health informatics, the gamut data associated with public health thus the huge data
must be navigated in and ordered way or store in cloud such that it is easily accessible (Shah,
et al., 2016).
The use of the ICT in the managing the public health data and health information data
is will help to bring a difference in overall health care. As per my understanding the remote
management of the health informatics of personal health data helps to procure instant care by
identification of the clinical priority and increasing the provision for co-ordination of
multidisciplinary team. In public health informatics, the use of the ICT helps to identify the
epidemiology of any epidemic disease or non-communicable disease. This helps in designing
of the public health policy.
Answer 3
Main challenges for the governance of global e-Health strategies can be discussed
under the light of the access of the health information for the pregnant women. Wen et al.
(2011) conducted a study for exploring access to the online health information and its
association with the socio-economic status. The first-time mother residing in the
Southwestern part of Sydney, Australia conducted the cross-sectional baseline survey. The

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results highlighted that first-time mother reported of not using internet for health information.
The lack of usage of the information technology for accessing pregnancy related health
information is directly proportional to the educational level of the level and family income.
These findings highlighted that for the comprehensive implementation of the global e-Health
strategies proper education about the internet usage is important along with providing cost-
effective access to internet to the people residing in the remote areas (Wen et al., 2011).
My personal experience states that in order to provide a comprehensive promotion of
global e-Health strategies it is important increase the knowledge of the mass must be
improved about the importance of the use of the health information technology and how it
helps to improve the overall quality of care.
Answer 4
As per the conference held on the Mobile Health global 2012’s conference, the
impact, cost-efficiency and ease of mHealth technologies are promoting the governmental
and donor agencies to invest more financial resources in mHealth and eHealth initiatives.
However, the comprehensive potential of eHealth or mHealth is not achieved and the reason
behind is lack of proper measurable deliverables. This can be linked with “pilotitus” where
more than one NGOs (non-governmental organizations) receive funding for relatively
identical pilot projects and then there so significant resource is left for scaling up the
comprehensive application of mHealth or eHealth approach (Loring, Matheson & Friel,
2012). For example, there are numerous project that are being undertaken in order to
understand the effectiveness of the eHealth in prevention of cardio-vascular diseases among
the adolescents. Numerous NGOs are working for it. Thus, there is a gap in effective funding
in managing of the cardio-vascular diseases (CVD) in among the obese individuals or the
older adults or the adults residing in the remote areas (Raeside et al., 2019). Loring,

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Matheson and Friel (2012) are of the opinion that people like the Aboriginals and the Torres
Strait Islanders or the older adults are more vulnerable to cardiovascular complications but e-
Health projects mainly targets the adolescents who lead an unhealthy life. This population
specific target of the e-Health project planning is creating health inequalities and thus
increasing the overall disease burden.
As per my opinion, the finding agencies must have their own tabulation sheet before
initiation of the funding such that no more than two NGOs receive funding for the same
projects in this way effective investment of the resource can be done. Moreover, funding for
the project must only be initiated based on the clinical priority of the project and how it can
improve the mass thereby helping to improve the overall health backup.
Answer 5
The countries in Africa are some of the low-income countries. In African Sub-
Saharan country, the use of eHealth is done with help of the mobile phone based surveillance
in order to provide real-time validated data for disease clustering along with instant response
to disease followed by further investigation. This eHealth approach in sub-Sahara Africa
helped n effective disease surveillance of the infectious disease like the malaria, tuberculosis,
influenza, and thereby helping to design proper health prevention for the effective
management of the seasonal outbreak of these diseases (Brinkel et al., 2014). In low-income
countries like India the application of e-Health technology helped in combating infant
mortality. This was done by eHealth-based screening of the children suffering from
malnutrition and subsequent education of family about effective management of malnutrition
followed by eHealth KIOSK implementation (Venkatesh, et al., 2016). However, effective
implementation of eHealth in the low-income countries is associated with certain challenges.
The first challenges include lack of proper access of the internet in the remote areas of the

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developing countries this is followed by lack of proper knowledge behind the accessing
internet for surfing of the data and poor funding in effective implementation of eHealth in
different areas of low-income countries (Brinkel et al., 2014).
Answer 6
Population who are more likely to use eHealth are the young adults. Nansen et al.
(2013) stated that the young adults are more likely to use the mobile health technology
(mHealth) in order to increase their knowledge in the domain of health-awareness and
refining skills for the self-management of the disease. The population that is less likely to use
the eHealth or the mHealth technology are the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders.
These group of population lacks knowledge in effective access of internet moreover, their
poor socio-economic status makes them disadvantaged towards understanding the importance
of eHealth. eHealth or mHealth approaches also lack culturally competent technological
strategies like lack of culturally competent telemedicine nurse and thereby decreasing the
access of mHealth among the Aboriginals (Umaefulam & Premkumar, 2017).
As per my opinion, broad access of ICT for health information is always desirable as
it will help in population wide disease prevention. Thus in order to create broad access of ICT
across the population, the first thing that needs to be done is training of the healthcare
professionals in using the ICT by maintaining privacy and confidentiality of the health
information. Moreover, the nursing professionals must be trained in culturally competent
communication such that the use of the ICT increases among the Aboriginals and Torres
Strait Islander population. The training of the healthcare professionals will be undertaken
under the supervision of the IT professionals (Button, Harrington & Belan, 2014). I also
believe that training must be limited to the healthcare professionals, the healthcare service
users needs to trained in the areas like importance of ICT and how to access of internet and

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how use of internet will be helpful in providing a cost-effective solution of their disease
management.

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References
Brinkel, J., Krämer, A., Krumkamp, R., May, J., & Fobil, J. (2014). Mobile phone-based
mHealth approaches for public health surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic
review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 11(11),
11559-11582.
Button, D., Harrington, A., & Belan, I. (2014). E-learning & information communication
technology (ICT) in nursing education: A review of the literature. Nurse education
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Currie, D. (2009). Public health leaders using social media to convey emergencies: New tools
a boon. Nation’s Health, 39(6), 1–30. Retrieved
from http://thenationshealth.aphapublications.org/content/39/6/1.2.full
Dixon, B. E., Pina, J., Kharrazi, H., Gharghabi, F., & Richards, J. (2015). What’s past is
prologue: a scoping review of recent public health and global health informatics
literature. Online journal of public health informatics, 7(2).
Flodgren, G., Rachas, A., Farmer, A. J., Inzitari, M., & Shepperd, S. (2015). Interactive
telemedicine: effects on professional practice and health care outcomes. Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews, (9).
Kruse, C. S., Soma, M., Pulluri, D., Nemali, N. T., & Brooks, M. (2017). The effectiveness of
telemedicine in the management of chronic heart disease–a systematic review. JRSM
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Loring, B., Matheson, D., & Friel, S. (2012). Reducing community health inequity: the
potential role for mHealth in Papua New Guinea.

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Nansen, B., Chakraborty, K., Gibbs, L. F., MacDougall, C., & Vetere, F. (2013). 'MYBus':
Young People's Mobile Health, Wellbeing and Digital Inclusion.
Raeside, R., Partridge, S. R., Singleton, A., & Redfern, J. (2019). Cardiovascular Disease
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Shah, G. H., Leider, J. P., Castrucci, B. C., Williams, K. S., & Luo, H. (2016). Characteristics
of local health departments associated with implementation of electronic health
records and other informatics systems. Public Health Reports, 131(2), 272-282.
Umaefulam, V. O., & Premkumar, K. (2017). Sharing Circle versus Focus Group in the
Development of Diabetic Retinopathy Mobile Health (Mhealth) Intervention for
Aboriginal Women: A Literature Review. The Canadian Journal of Native
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Venkatesh, V., Rai, A., Sykes, T. A., & Aljafari, R. (2016). Combating Infant Mortality in
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406-411.
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