Cutting Edge Issues

eHealth:
Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

Case Study: Overlake Hospital Medical Center

Information on Demand: Consumer-Controlled Medical Records

Finding Leaders for Internet Health Care

Building the Security-Capable Enterprise

Planning Business Strategies with Internet Support

Internet Use as a Survival Strategy

Case Study Zone

Who is eMed?

Case Study: Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Bellevue, Wash.

Part 2

The Internet is no longer just for computers. First, we had text; then, along came graphics and photographs on the Internet. Sound became available, and then there were moving graphics. Soon, there was video, and now there is streaming video. Each development shifts the mindset of what the Internet is really all about. The Internet is a broadcast medium, and for the first time in the history of the world, ordinary individuals have an ability that used to require a million dollar facility: they can broadcast to the world.

I used to become extremely frustrated in dealing with news directors and trying to impart what I thought was important medical information about a disease process or public health issue. During sweeps, the directors would ask for presentations on heart disease, depression, or other very common conditions. I would reply that I had been planning to cover osteogenic sarcoma or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; they would say, “Who cares about that? Nobody cares about that.” I would argue that if they or their families were affected by these diseases, they would care desperately. I had forgotten what the well-known broadcasting physician Art Ulene, MD, had told me years before. He said, “They own the transmitter, and they are in the business of selling soap. It’s all about ratings and numbers. That’s the game.”

This is why I am so thrilled with the Internet and the power that it gives the whole healing profession to reach out to people in need and disseminate information when and where it is needed. The Internet permits an individual with a 1-in-100,000 disease to connect with others who have that condition worldwide. In the not-too-distant future, when Mrs. Jones comes to my office and has right upper-quadrant abdominal pain, and we tell her that she needs laparoscopic cholecystectomy, she will then pull up, on her handheld device, all of the information that she needs, when and where she needs it: best physicians, best outcomes, best practices, and best alternatives.

Although statistics concerning the Internet are always out of date, an August 2000, Louis Harris and Associates poll indicated that 86% of adults who have access to the Internet, use it to access health information. Health care consumers are using the World Wide Web to inform themselves to such a degree that it can be daunting to health care professionals. Patients are asking questions about alternative medicine and clinical research trials. They have access to the world’s medical literature from their living rooms. There is no way that a physician can compete with their depth of knowledge of a single disease, because the physician is expected to have a broader understanding of a great many disorders.