Conclusions
With the rapid growth of e-health in developing
countries, there is clearly an urgent need for
solid evidence of its impact to justify and guide
the investment of resources in such systems.
Despite major increases in evaluations in recent
years, most large e-health implementations have
little or no evaluation data. To date, most studies
have been small; focused on process indicators
rather than patient outcomes, or on the attitudes
of users and patients; and performed mostly by
academic groups. An increased focus on including
evaluations as part of e-health implementations
is necessary and should be adopted by organizations
implementing or funding such
systems. One method is for large funders to include
resources for evaluations or make them a
requirement for implementation.