Today, eHealth is not a new term in the health and technology industry. In some countries, it has become part of the everyday health service and approach to healthcare in general. However, eHealth still has a long way to go in order to get a global reach and usage in every household. The benefits and advantages are numerous – it’s an easy, cheap, quick and reliable approach to health. But, even in countries where eHealth is not an unknown practice, such as the Netherlands where ehealth is already widely used, its use is still a challenge. Recent studies have shown that even a surprising number of Dutch people are still unaware of its positive aspects. One of the reasons for this being that they, simply, do not know much about it and the fact that old habits die hard, especially among the older citizens. But, what about developing countries? Their resources and access to eHealth are often more limited. In addition, developing countries are facing many problems, such as shortages of material resources, lack of resources, lack of general practitioners, specialists, as well as other professional medical personnel.
eHealth As a Starting Point of Modern Medical Service
The rapid development of mobile communication systems opens up their possibilities in different areas. One of the applications is in mobile healthcare – mHealth, part of the wider field of eHealth. Mobile health is based on the use of mobile healthcare technologies, such as improving the health awareness of the population for the purpose of preventing diseases, remote monitoring of patients’ health parameters, etc. The development of new technologies in the field of mobile communications results in an increasing trend. The number of mobile users around the world and the increasing coverage of the territory for mobile services is increasing. According to the latest data from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), seven billion people (95% of the world’s population) live in areas covered with mobile network services. Mobile networks (starting with 3G networks) are available to 84% of the global population. Currently, it has 4 billion LTE users (Longterm Evolution) network, which accounts for 53% of the global population.
Revolution In Patient Care
In almost all countries, especially in developing countries, large numbers of settlements in rural areas do not have basic medical institutions, so the population in these areas has no access to adequate health care. In emergencies, people have to cross great distances in order to receive a proper medical service and patient care. This is a consequence of the centralized health system, which is currently prevailing both in the developed and in the underdeveloped parts of the world. This system is based on the premise that both the patient and the doctor need to be on the same physical location. Thanks to the development of the modern and technologically centered health service, the health system can be changed and decentralized, so that the service could be provided and received even when the patient and the doctor are in different locations.