Health

e-Health Initiatives: What is e-Health?

Social Transformation Programmes Division – Commonwealth Secretariat

What is e-health?
We define e-health as the use of ICTs, locally and at a distance, to strengthen health systems and address public health priorities. E-health has the potential to increase the efficiency of health systems and to improve access, especially in remote areas, for marginalised or excluded populations, people with disabilities and the elderly. It can be used to improve service quality, and can also reduce the cost of health care delivery by reducing redundancy and duplication and introducing economies of scale.

The Commonwealth e-health programme
E-health is being promoted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, not as a stand-alone programme but as support to the ongoing efforts to strengthen health systems. Based on the May 2008 Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting (CHMM), which focused on e-health, the Secretariat was mandated to:

• pursue high-level policy dialogues involving the health and information technology sectors, the private sector, health professionals and civil society on the opportunities and the challenges of e-health; they also requested the Secretariat to facilitate these dialogues; 
• explore setting up e-health pilot projects in all regions of the Commonwealth; 
• pursue public-private partnerships (PPPs) in e-health; 
• share knowledge, expertise and technical assistance between Commonwealth countries, both North–South and South–South; and
• leverage additional resources to support the further development of its work on e-health and development.

These mandates are in line with the Millennium Development Goal 8, target 18. The aim of Goal 8 is to ‘develop a global partnership for development’, and stresses the need for ‘cooperation with the private sector to make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications’. 

Activities - Research
In 2008, the Secretariat carried out a survey of Commonwealth member countries and territories to find out about their e-health status. The survey shows that all member countries are already practising e-health at some level. For instance, Zambia has introduced a Smartcard that contains patients’ medical records, which patients can carry wherever they go. Medical technology in the Cook Islands – a self-governing country in free association with Commonwealth member New Zealand – gives health workers access to centralised patient-health records, thus improving reporting and analysis of health statistics. These surveys are carried out periodically to update the existing information on the e-health status of member countries.

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