The Internet appears to have been the most significant technological breakthrough in the history of mankind for dramatically changing the way people think, learn, work, and play. And the power of the Internet to help revolutionize health care should not be underestimated. Julia EWC van Gemert-Pijnen, PhD et al have written for the Journal of Medical Internet Research "A Holistic Framework to Improve the Uptake and Impact of eHealth Technologies".
These researchers have stated that many eHealth technologies are not successful in realizing sustainable innovations in health care practices. It is their position that one of the reasons for this has been that the current development of eHealth technology often disregards the interdependencies between technology, human characteristics, and the socioeconomic environment, with the result of technology that has a low impact in health care practices. They suggest a new, holistic approach to the development of eHealth technologies to overcome the hurdles with eHealth design and implementation. This holistic approach should take into account the complexity of health care and the rituals and habits of patients and other stakeholders.
The researchers discovered that despite their potential, the relationship between the visions on eHealth, proposed strategies, and research methods are often obscure. This may be due to a rather conceptual approach that focuses on the rationale behind the frameworks rather than on practical guidelines. In order to overcome these limitations, the researchers composed a holistic framework based on a participatory development approach, persuasive design techniques, and business modeling.
It has been their conclusion that to demonstrate the impact of eHealth technologies more effectively, a fresh way of thinking is required about how technology can be used to innovate health care. This new approach also requires new concepts and instruments to develop and implement technologies in practice. These researchers believe that a comprehensive view on supporting health care by technology is necessary to ensure that eHealth technologies are used effectively and efficiently.
They propose a holistic approach for the development of eHealth technologies. With holism it is felt that properties of individual elements in a complex system are considered to be determined by the relations they bear to other elements. In a consideration of applications for social theory this means that “each term owns its meaning to its relations with the others, so that they are all more or less closely inter-defined, and a change in the meaning of one term will have repercussions for all the rest”.
The position of this research team is therefore that human characteristics, socioeconomic and cultural environments, and technology are considered to be closely connected to each other. People are affected in their daily lives by eHealth technologies. People naturally bring in their psychological makeup, their rituals and habits, and their social skills, which all affect their personal and professional environment. Taken from a holistic perspective this all affects their ability to interact with technology. It should be remembered that in order for strategies to change behavior they should recognize the interdependencies between individual and organizational factors.
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