4.2.5 Openness
Given the workloads imposed by overloaded health care systems, staying up to date
with respect to the latest research has been a traditional challenge for health care providers
[37]. Web 2.0 technologies like RSS feeds, social bookmarking, blogs and
mash-ups allow providers to stay informed about new research results being published
in their various fields of practice. In addition, consumer health networks such as PatientsLikeMe.
com allow providers to correlate their experience with data from a much
larger patient population in order to provide more evidence-based decisions.
5 Evolving Smart Internet Technologies for Health Care
Our brief tour of existing applications in health care has revealed the presence of
several mechanisms relevant to the concept of Smart Internet systems. First, the use of
3 openeducation.zunia.org
4 k4health.org
The Smart Internet as a Catalyst for Health Care Reform 39
cloud computing in applications such as Doctations has provided a method for integrating
the efforts of multiple servers. Second, apomediation techniques using human
or software agents may partially facilitate the Smart Internet goal of reduce the cognitive
burden on users. In particular, the use of software agents such as the aforementioned
eNurse can provide patients with a familiar domain-oriented metaphor, as
opposed to general Internet search engines. In addition, the multi-tenancy supported
by some of the cloud computing architectures could help address the problems identified
by Price [36] concerning the disruptive effects of single-tenant services on health
care delivery.
Despite these advances, it is clear that current Web-based health applications fall
short of achieving the goals set out in the Smart Internet vision. Many of the current
problems are technical, but significant challenges also exist in the political, legal and
social domains. Furthermore, there are complex interactions between the issues in
these different areas; future progress towards evolving the Smart Internet for health
care will depend on our ability to effectively recognize and reconcile these dependencies.
The situation therefore calls for substantial interdisciplinary efforts. In the sections
to follow, we will analyze some of the existing challenges from a variety of
perspectives