Internet communication is developing. Social networking sites enable patients to publish and receive communications very easily. Many stakeholders, including patients, are using these media to find new ways to make sense of diseases, to find and discuss treatments, and to give support to...

Informed individuals who are actively engaged in managing the daily challenges of their chronic disease are the change agents in a healthcare system that is presently unresponsive to the needs of this growing population. The application of information technology (IT) to support self-management...

The increased reliance on patient self-generated data has had a major impact on the development of the virtual team in the management of diabetes mellitus. Only recently has the concept of the virtual team been taken seriously in the management of the individual with diabetes, in part due to the...

In recent years, US healthcare experts have increasingly agreed that the effective application of information technology (IT) can enable the industry to address its three most pressing concerns: an increase in medical errors, rising costs, and the fragmentation of care delivery. While other...

An essential component of quality asthma care is ongoing communication between patients and their caregivers. To make healthy, lifelong changes in their behavior, patients need to receive simple, consistent, and reinforcing messages. Interactive, electronic communication has the capacity to...

The epidemiological burden of diabetes mellitus is changing the classical model of diabetes management, in which a specialist center delivers care based on registration, recall and regular review. Primary care services are progressively assuming a crucial role in screening, prevention and...

The Internet has changed healthcare practice and has just begun to influence pharmaceutical consumers and providers. The Internet firstly affects the pharmaceutical consumer through the five main functions it offers to all consumers of care. These functions are: 1. to provide and distribute...

Healthcare institutions, such as hospitals, are made up of highly distributed and complex organizational structures and processes. As such there is an increasingly large number of information interfaces between various involved healthcare professionals, making efficient organization of patient...

Diabetic eye disease is the most common cause of new cases of blindness in the Western world. If the disease is detected early then proper treatment can be provided to prevent loss of vision. Regular screening can reduce the incidence and prevalence of blindness due to diabetic retinopathy....

With emerging access to the Internet and valuable healthcare resources online, healthcare consumers have quickly adopted the World Wide Web as a resource for healthcare information. Because growing numbers of consumers are accessing healthcare information online, it is important to explore how...

The Internet's information capabilities and benefits to commerce have been proven but these results have an uncertain relationship to healthcare, managed care and disease management. The highly fragmented structure of the US healthcare industry presents strategic and operational issues, which...

Clinical knowledge and information technology play a major role in the success of disease management programs in achieving improvements in financial and clinical outcomes. The multi-dimensionality and complexity of data needed to run these programs efficiently make information management an...

A Community Health Information Network (CHIN) is a web-based net of computer systems which allows the electronic exchange of clinical, financial and administrative information among unaffiliated healthcare entities in order to improve the efficiency and delivery of healthcare in the community....

During the twentieth century, chronic health conditions (which include both chronic diseases and impairments), became the major cause of illness, disability and death in developed countries. The high prevalence of chronic conditions among the elderly, combined with a rapidly growing population...

The Internet represents a substantial advance in information exchange and presents the healthcare industry with a significant opportunity to fundamentally enhance the manner in which individuals manage their relative wellness. As the World Wide Web matures, usage patterns are becoming more...

Objective: To assess the efficacy of a World Wide Web-enabled asthma self-management intervention on quality-of-life indicators among self-selected participants with asthma. Design: A quasi-experimental design was used in which quality-of-life outcome indicators were derived from the Mini Asthma...

Objective: To assess the utility of using a computer software program to determine whether epoetin alfa therapy drug use evaluation (DUE) criteria were met. Study design: Computer software was designed to allow pharmacists to enter patient data such as haematocrit results and iron stores into a...

An electronic prescription processing option for electronic medical records can assist medical practitioners in the rapid selection, decision-making, processing and recording of individual prescriptions during encounters with patients in the consultation room or for repeat prescriptions. The...

The directory of development organizations, listing 70,000 development organizations, has been prepared to facilitate international cooperation and knowledge sharing in development work, both among civil society organizations, academic and research institutions, governments and the private sector.