ICML 9

9º World Congress on Health Information and Libraries

Salvador, Bahia - Brazil, September, 20 to 23 - 2005

BVS4

4th Regional Coordination Meeting of the VHL

September, 19 to 20 - 2005

Terms of reference

Oficial Language: lang
Panel 3 - eHealth and ePatient: a new health culture?

Information technologies, for many years have been supporting most of the process related to health planning, promotion, research, education, communication and, with more public impact, health care. The recent increase in the usage of devices, procedures and communication on health processes will change the way health is perceived and cared? Is possible to measure the social impact of the information technologies? Evaluating the impact of information technologies on the level of knowledge the population has on its health.

Perspective 1: Information technology will permeate all actions related to health and therefore it will contribute to the increase of a new health culture. How this culture can contribute to health equity? Is information technology empower people? 

Perspective 2: Health is a social construction based on human and cultural values as well as sc ientific knowledge. Information technologies are expected to strengthen the human related value of health.

Perspective 3: Health services represent the public structure through which government and the civil society expect to provide equitable access to health. How information technology can contribute to empower and transform health services to operate in a new paradigm built on knowledge based and learning environments?