Digital technology has now been used to document various aspects of human health and medicine.
We are witnessing tremendous advancements in the nature and quality of health services; some severe illnesses have been eliminated, and life expectancy has been prolonged to a point where it is possible to forecast that “one could live hundred years.”
Key Takeaways
- eHealth encompasses technology in healthcare, including electronic medical records, telemedicine, and remote patient monitoring.
- Digital health is a broader term that includes eHealth but also covers wearable devices, health apps, and data analytics.
- Both concepts aim to improve patient care and health outcomes through technology, but digital health covers a wider range of applications and innovations.
eHealth vs Digital
Ehealth refers to the usage of electronic communication and information technology to improve healthcare delivery, such as telemedicine. Digital health encompasses a broader range of healthcare technologies, including wearable devices, mobile health apps, and digital therapeutics.
eHealth is a growing field at the crossroads of medical informatics, public health, and business, which refers to information supplied and health services or enhanced via the Internet and similar technologies.
In a larger sense, the phrase describes not just a technological advancement but also a state of mind, a style of thinking, an attitude, and a commitment to utilizing information and communication technology to enhance health care locally, regionally, and globally.
Digital health is a broad concept that includes e-health, m-Health, and telehealth and incorporates everything from electronic patient records to remote monitoring, connected equipment, and digital therapies, among other things.
It entails utilizing technology, big data, and AI to collect, exchange, analyze, and apply data on patient results to assist healthcare practitioners in making informed decisions and improving care.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | eHealth | Digital |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Comprises a vast portion of medical information and focuses on the use of ICT in the development of health | Usage of revolution in the art and medicine science to reach masses for healthcare. |
| Goal | Improve the health system’s accessibility and quality of care | Use technology to provide healthcare to the masses. |
| Accessibility | Less accessible as it’s not a wide term | More accessible as it’s a broad term including eHealth, mHealth, etc. |
| Tools | Systems, products, and services. | Technology that provides services to consumers and patients |
| Examples | Electronic health records, health portals, telemedicine services, and health information networks. | Applications, electronic medical records, telemedicine, and connected medicine. |
What is eHealth?
eHealth is a relatively new healthcare practice that relies on using information and communication technology. Because it is such a broad phrase that covers so much ground, eHealth can’t be represented by a standard word.
eHealth is being used to give high-quality care to an increasing number of people at a low cost and with efficiency and quality.
The foundations to success are hence integrated IT solutions for enhancing administrative and clinical operations. Until recently, eHealth evaluations were limited in their ability to address economic and budgetary issues.
Global trends have greatly influenced healthcare. One of the key goals of eHealth is to apply information technologies and communication technologies to health.
Moreover, eHealth aims to empower patients and help them attain better health.
E-Health promises that it will improve healthcare efficiency, lowering expenses.
Decreasing duplicative or un-required diagnostic or therapeutic interventions and improving communication between patients and healthcare institutions are all feasible ways to cut expenses.
Improving healthcare quality by increasing efficiency and not lowering costs but also raising quality. Patients are like authority by facilitating comparisons of different caregivers, which assures quality.
Ensuring patients are directed to the best quality providers, e-health improves the quality of health care.
What is Digital?
The term “digital health” refers to a wide range of innovations that help solve healthcare problems. Advancement in medicine’s art and science to the pervasiveness of communication and information technology (ICTs).
Digital technology has now been used to document various aspects of human health & medicine.
Through data access, digital tools provide clinicians with a more holistic perspective of patient health and allow people greater control over their health. Digital health has the potential to improve medical outcomes while also increasing efficiency.
Emerging technologies have the potential to empower consumers to make better health decisions and provide new options for aiding prevention, early identification of life-threatening diseases, and chronic condition management outside of traditional healthcare settings.
Providers and other stakeholders are using digital health technologies to reduce inefficiencies, improve access, reduce costs, improve quality, and make medicine more individualized for patients.
Furthermore, the health industry faces numerous issues today, accounting for a considerable amount of GDP in many countries’ economies.
As a result, a need for radical technologies is evident, and ‘digital healthcare’ is a primary possibility for driving that innovation. Its focus is on ways to better engage people with modern technologies.
Applications, telemedicine, electronic health record, “connected medicine,” and “smart homes” are examples of such technologies.
Main Differences Between eHealth and Digital
- eHealth is a form of healthcare practice that relies on using information and communication technologies, whereas Digital health is an advancement of medicine’s art and science in response to omnipresent technologies.
- The purpose of eHealth is to make the health system’s accessibility better and quality of care, whereas digital health has a goal to use technology to provide and scale healthcare to as many people as possible.
- eHealth uses technology that uses products and systems that could go beyond the usage of internet applications, whereas Digital health tools are a technology that provides services to consumers and patients while also assisting them in managing their health and wellness.
- Electronic medical records, information on health networks, telemedicine services, and many health portals are all instances of eHealth, whereas telemedicine, Applications, smart homes, electronic medical records, and connected medicine are all examples of digital health technology.
- eHealth is less accessible as although it’s reaching as many people as it can, whereas digital health is a wide term that includes eHealth and eHealth, making it reachable to people.
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167527318369973
- https://www.jmir.org/2018/5/e178
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