E-Health has great potential to improve the management of chronic diseases. Worldwide, governments and institutions have made multi-billion dollar investment in e-Health to modernise health services delivery. Yet their impact and how individuals use them is not readily known. In particular, few studies have examined how we can optimally re-design health services to assist those living with chronic conditions using E-Health.
In this presentation, I will review recent studies that examine what patients and consumers need to manage their chronic conditions. Further, I will describe the development of an E-Health research platform called Healthy.me, a personal health management system developed at the Centre for Health Informatics (UNSW), designed for healthcare consumers to engage with clinicians, health services, and their social peers in an actionable way.
Results conducted using the Healthy.me platform across different health settings will be presented. Over the past 5 years, more than 2000 consumers in Australia were recruited to use Healthy.me to manage their chronic conditions and mental wellbeing. These trials examined conditions including asthma, breast cancer, mental health, influenza vaccination, sexual health and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). This presentation will conclude with insights on how E-Health can potentially be used in the re-design of health services to assist those living with diabetes.