The Business of eHealth

Abstract

Healthcare, as the world's largest industry, exhibits many inefficiencies, inequities and quality variations, much of this being attributable to inadequate information flow. Hence, in principle there should be business opportunities for eHealth, but, there has often been a failure to distinguish between the ‘e’ hype and the actual delivery of better, faster, cheaper and more reliable health-care processes. This paper looks beyond the hype and identifies the conditions that need to be met if some of the business potential of eHealth is to be realised.