Contested Definition
Several authors have noted the variable usage in the term, from being specific to the use of the Internet in healthcare to being generally around any use of computers in healthcare. Various authors have considered the evolution of the term and its usage and how this maps to changes in health informatics and healthcare generally. Oh et al., in a 2005 systematic review of the term's usage, offered the definition of eHealth as a set of technological themes in health today, more specifically based on commerce, activities, stakeholders, outcomes, locations, or perspectives. One thing that all sources seem to agree on is that e-Health initiatives do not originate with the patient, though the patient may be a member of a patient organization that seeks to do this (see e-Patient).
Read more about this topic: EHealth
Famous quotes containing the words contested and/or definition:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)