Professional Experience Placement

This editorial by Eysenbach (2001) traces the emergence of the term by marketing people rather than academics to describe the emerging digital possibilities emerging in health.  At the time of writing it was acknowledged that the term did not provide specific guidance, but could be viewed as dynamic and flexible! Fifteen years on… there is still no standardised terminology to explain ehealth and there remain issues with discussing ehealth, as it needs to be defined each time, as users have different interpretations depending on their needs or understanding.  Eysenbach (2001) stated the ‘e’ in ehealth could be used to describe other characteristics of this field. He provides a description of the other ‘e’s.  These are efficiency; enhancing quality; evidence-based; empowerment; encouragement; education; enabling; extending; ethics and equity. The author also mentioned they should be easy to use; entertaining and exciting.

The emergence of other subfields such as mobile health, telehealth, ubiquitous health… are also used to describe particular technologies or platforms, which can become confusing as they are not necessarily mutually exclusive have also occurred in the interim to become part of ehealth. This rapidly evolving field continues to provide possibilities for enhancing health outcomes by employing the ‘e’s mentioned , including opportunities for networking among health professionals through ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Academia.edu  or less formal methods such as FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Pininterest etc. This blog is part of a virtual community of practice for Clinical supervisors and you are welcome to join us @PEPCommunity.