eHealth: Transforming Global Healthcare Delivery

Al Hammond — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:40:48 -0400

I've been spending the week at one of a series of 8 conferences on eHealth, brainstorming with other entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, health informatics specialists, and policy experts. The setting could hardly be more lovely--the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio center looking down on the deep waters of Lake Como and looking up at the sheer granite cliffs of the Alps.

The scale of the scenery seemed to match the scale of our task, to figure out how to unlock the eHealth marketplace—that is, unleash entrepreneurship and market forces combined with technology—to provide better health care, or for many rural communities in developing countries, any health care at all.

The barriers are well understood. Very limited access to health care facilities in rural and many peri-urban areas. An absolute dearth of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists in rural areas. Low quality care—few diagnostics, widespread fake drugs. High costs for drugs, doctors, and hospital care that can bankrupt poor families. Can technology help—especially information and communications technology? And how to jump start its use in poor countries when even rich countries have not yet adopted systematic eHealth strategies?

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eHealth: Transforming Global Healthcare Delivery