e-Health
e-Health is defined as the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the wide range of aspects that affect health care, from diagnostics to monitoring the patients, without forgetting the management of the organisations involved in these activities.
The e-Health users are citizen-consumers, patients, health care professionals and organisations.
Advantages: patients feel more confident, sees their quality of life improve, costs of the medical institutions are cut with respect to resources and time , ongoing care is easier to provide, and access barriers to health care are reduced.
Examples of this type of services are home tele-checks, tele-alert systems (particularly useful in the case of elderly patients) and tele-monitoring of the patient which is used to control the vital signs of the patients.