With the advent of 2009, I was looking for something to overview the present situation in Health Informatics. Healthcare related use of the internet is a common phenomenon and an estimated 80% of internet users have used it for obtaining health information. Knowledge body in Health sciences is large and fragmented, and even a treating physician may not have all the data he requires.
There is an urgent need for tools that can aggregate information from
multiple sources to improve health care decision making, enhance health
management, and produce better patient outcomes. This is one of the
main drivers for the use of the Internet in healthcare.
Semantic Web applications and Web 2.0 technologies have yet to be applied to health care. Privacy issues are of concern, but use of cloud computing within health care delivery system just cannot be held back. Every person has a fundamental right to health, which includes easy access to high quality and best possible care and access to medical information, besides other parameters.
