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The role of libraries in eHealth service delivery in Australia.

Article Excerpt
eHealth is an emerging service sector which has great potential to improve health care delivery to rural and remote communities, facilitate health surveillance, and promote health education and research. Despite the critical need for eHealth services in Australia based on the challenges of distance and human resources, its utility has yet to be realised, resulting in the 'Australian rural eHealth paradox'. Increasing availability of electronic health information resources needs to be adequately harnessed to improve the availability and quality of health information on the Internet to both health care providers and the community. This paper describes the key information resources required for an efficient eHealth system, and the major issues that influence the use of eHealth information resources. Different models for the delivery of eHealth information services are reviewed, and the analysis explores the potential role of the library and information management sector in strengthening eHealth information service delivery in Australia.

Introduction

Over the past three decades rapid developments in information technology have improved communication all over the world, largely through the Internet. For the health sector, this has immense potential to facilitate health care service delivery, administration, education, surveillance, and research. These functions are collectively termed eHealth. Although there are many definitions of eHealth, it can briefly be defined as 'Cost effective and secure use of information and communication technologies in support of health and health related fields' (Oh et al. 2005). Given the wide spectrum of these services, the need for eHealth has spawned a large number of providers with varying content as well as quality, with overlapping or competing interests, based on the characteristics of different stakeholders. This has created difficulties for end users of eHealth healthcare providers, the community, health administrators, and academia who are required to deal with a confusing array of electronic literature on these aspects. Although recent initiatives have attempted to improve access to high quality eHealth information resources through managed portals, the utilisation of eHealth resources is hampered by inadequate infrastructure and training programs. This is particularly so in the case of rural and remote communities in Australia, which have been targeted specifically for the provision of high quality health care by the National Productivity Commission in 2005 (Liaw & Humphreys 2006). This paper explores the potential role of the information services sector in general, and libraries in particular, in improving provision, access and utilisation of eHealth resources in rural Australia, towards advancing the quality of health care and thereby health status, in these communities.

A brief overview of the different dimensions of eHealth helps to place the role of the information services sector into context. Firstly, Internet and computer technology are fundamental to eHealth services, which require developments in hardware, software, and communications, with all their related technologies. However, technological developments have been driven by the business sector, emphasising design and implementation of hospital information systems for improved patient management, electronic health records, image transfer, financial transactions, and corporate communications (James 2003). While these have no doubt enhanced facility based health care and management, it is unlikely that these technological developments have had any impact...

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