When compared to other f ields of the human sciences, Health Informatics is very young. The history of terms used to represent our field bears witness to that: Medical Computing, Medical Informatics, Health and Biomedical Informatics, and more recently eHealth, are but a few examples to show our field is still evolving. The idea here is not to create an argument about how expressive such terms ...

BACKGROUND Sociodemographic and health-related factors are often investigated for their association with the active use of electronic health (eHealth). The importance of such factors has been found to vary, depending on the purpose or means of eHealth and the target user groups. Pakistanis are one of the biggest immigrant groups in the Oslo area, Norway. Due to an especially high risk of develo...

Communication is the central social process used to deliver health care and promote public health. Ehealth applications, the use of new information technologies in health care and health promotion, have developed as new tools for communicating with diverse audiences of health care consumers and providers. The growth of ehealth tools has spurred an information revolution within the modern health...

BACKGROUND The digital divide is a recognized public health problem caused by social determinants that exacerbate health disparities. Despite the "tectonic shift" in how most of the public obtains cancer information, underserved communities are at increased risk of being digitally marginalized. However, research that examines factors underlying eHealth information seeking in diverse health cont...

BACKGROUND As eHealth interventions prove both efficacious and practical, and as they arguably overcome certain barriers encountered by traditional face-to-face treatment for chronic pain, their number has increased dramatically in recent times. However, there is a dearth of research that focuses on evaluating and comparing the different types of technology-assisted interventions. This is a pro...

BACKGROUND Effective broad-reach interventions to reduce childhood obesity are needed, but there is currently little consensus on the most effective approach. Parental involvement in interventions appears to be important. The use of eHealth modalities in interventions also seems to be promising. To our knowledge, there have been no previous reviews that have specifically investigated the effect...

BACKGROUND The health system of Bangladesh is haunted by challenges of accessibility and affordability. Despite impressive gains in many health indicators, recent evidence has raised concerns regarding the utilization, quality and equity of healthcare. In the context of new and unfamiliar public health challenges including high population density and rapid urbanization, eHealth and mHealth are ...

This paper presents three distinct challenges to research and development (R&D) of marketable eHealth systems and suggests strategies to mitigate them. The eHealth system in question is designed to improve self-care and collaboration between remotely monitored heart failure patients and clinicians. By way of introspection and reflection on a current and a previous project, the authors propo...