Annotated Bibliography :eHealth platforms available in Europe

1. Bibliographical Information

Benedict, M., Herrmann, H., & Esswein, W. (2018). eHealth-Platforms-The Case of Europe. In MIE (pp. 241-245).

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martin_Benedict/publication/323219365_eHealth-Platforms_-_The_Case_of_Europe/links/5a86adb2458515b8af89863e/eHealth-Platforms-The-Case-of-Europe.pdf

1. Summary of Article

This article tries to determine the various eHealth platforms available in Europe and summarize them in regard to their functional groups. There has been a lot of attention in determining the platform methods needed to improve new discoveries in eHealth and integration in organizations (Benedict and Schlieter 2017). Various eHealth platform projects are identified in Europe but there lack a systematic view of the platforms. Thus this article discusses all the existing and collected eHealth platforms and grouping them according to their functions, thus creating a functional group for the platforms.

1. Evaluation of Article

The article says that eHealth systems used in Europe have differences in their maturity and objectives but there exist a dominant function of the eHealth platforms used in the European countries. EHealth platforms help solve various problems such as the reducing number of healthcare professionals in rural areas, failures of the market used in eHealth business theories, and constant increase in the number of elderly persons who need care in their homes. The article led to identification of various functional plans for the eHealth platforms. The objective of this study was to determine the various functional groups in multiple forms of eHealth infrastructures. The article gives various categories of eHealth platforms used in Europe and their functional role (Benedict and Schlieter 2017). Various sources were used to determine the current and functional eHealth platforms used in European countries. The sources include; scientific literature, government websites, references used in the identified platforms, and funding database. To establish the active platforms, the websites were screened to get new and actual reports published recently. The identified platforms had the following functional characteristics; exchange of data, development of application methods, and data storage and exchange. The eHealth platforms identified were grouped into Personal Health Records, Electronic Health Records, Telemedicine, Ambient Assisted Living, and the infrastructure.

1. Reflection on Application to Practice

There are different understandings used in identification of eHealth platforms in European countries. The word platform is used to describe the existing infrastructural parts and specifications. In European countries, the main focuses of eHealth platforms are on data storage and exchange through the existing infrastructural parts (Benedict and Schlieter 2017). The article suggests that further research should be done on the developing eHealth platforms identified, to establish other characteristics that should be involved in a dimension to prevent loss of data. The effects of the networks and eHealth platforms networks can help in conducting future researches.

References

1. Benedict and H. Schlieter (2017), Revise your eHealth-Platform! – Design Principles for a Descriptive Case Study, in: AMCIS 2017 Proceedings.