ICT Based Health Governance Practices: The Indian Experience

Electronic health commonly described as the health sector use of information and communication technology (ICT), has rapidly spread around the world. Increased use of ICT is stimulating the technology insertion into the health sector and is enabling the effective functioning of public health systems. A steering committee on health constituted by the Planning Commission suggested in its report for the 12th Plan (2012–17) that all the district hospitals, primary health centres and sub centres should be linked to leading tertiary care centres through telemedicine, Skype and similar audio visual media. The committee also urged to give utmost importance to M-health, that is, use of mobile phones as communication tool for health development. The study intends to discuss the promotion of increased use of information and communication technologies in health care systems to improve efficiency, access and accountability of health care services in India. The study deals with some references from India which underscore the developments of ICT based health governance and discuss the policies at both national and regional level to shed light on the potential of e-health in improvising the delivery of health care services at domestic level. The purpose of this study is to relay that the effective implementation of information and communication technologies can make health care services more accessible to the all the sections of the society and will help the government and other stake ...
Source: Journal of Health Management - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research