Abstract. Health care systems around the world are under pressure to lower
costs and improve outcomes. Over the last decade, the Internet has begun to
impact the traditional consumer-provider relationship in the health care sector.
Patients are now commonly known to search the Internet for information and
services relevant to their condition in addition to consulting with their providers.
The Smart Internet has been envisioned as a major step in evolving the
Internet into a more user-centric, pro-active and intelligent medium. In this
chapter, we discuss the opportunities of Smart Internet technologies in context
of health care applications. We characterize the current state of Internet-based
health applications and summarize important challenges to be addressed in order
to be able to use the Smart Internet for reforming health care systems.
Keywords: Smart Internet, health care, consumer health informatics, medicine
2.0, eHealth.