Let’s Talk E-Health

It is a sector like others in the digital world, is developing at high speed. As technology progresses, it is modernizing and seeing the emergence of innovations that have made it more efficient and more credible.
A little pedagogy and let’s discover together e-health and its benefits, then we will see themain challenge that mark this sector.

What is e-health?

E-health refers to the application of information and communication technologies to all health activities. Within this overall concept, it is necessary to differentiate between activities strictly related to medical practice (telemedicine), telehealth, and other digital solutions that are more commercially oriented. [1]
Although the words telemedicine and telehealth have the same prefix, they mean something else entirely. And telemedicine is one of the areas of telehealth.
Telemedicine is a medical practice that consists of performing remote care using technological means. These practices include teleconsultation, teleexpertise, teleassistance, remote medical monitoring, etc. While telehealth is a practice that facilitates and improves prevention, diagnosis, treatment and medical follow-up through applications on smartphones and also connected watches. [2]
The objective sought by e-health is to give autonomy to patients by allowing them to become the actor of their healththrough approaches aimed at optimizing, fluidifying and coordinating the medical and medico-social care pathways. On the other hand, give accessibility and equitability of care to all patients.

The benefits of e-health[3] :

E-health differs from the traditional health system because of its dematerialization, here are the advantages:
• More effective follow-up.
• Fewer consultations, so follow-up costs less.
• A hyper personalized and remote follow-up.
• Optimization of the administration of treatments.
• An anticipation of the evolution of diseases to reduce the number of unexpected hospitalizations.
• Patients living in areas very poor in medical care (medical deserts, oil platforms, areas cut off from the world etc …) pwill have a medical follow-up.

Security challenge in the Cyber Health Sector

E-Health services are in a unique position, as they have access to sensitive information about their patients. It is a new and growing industry that is not yet fully regulated. This leads to security issues that need to be addressed as the industry continues to grow.
This is why it is important for professionals who carry out this activity to take the utmost care on aspects related to the confidentiality and security of the information collected of the state of health of their patients.
They need to make sure that all their systems are updated, and that all data is encrypted. On the other hand, make sure they have a backup plan in case of a problem with their systems.
Security is one of the most important aspects in this sector. This industry has been facing cyberattacks for a long time and it is only getting worse.
Some of the most common types of cyberattacks in this industry are phishing, ransomware, and data theft. These attacks can lead to the compromise of personal records, the leakage of patients’ health information, or even the endangerment of their lives.
The security challenges facing this industry are not new to the world of technology. They have been around for some time and will continue to exist for as long.

Sources :

[1] « e-santé, télémédecine, télésanté : définitions », GrandEst. https://www.grandest.fr/la-fibre/e-sante-telemedecine-telesante-definitions/ (consulté le 30 août 2022).
[2] « Télésanté ». https://www.ameli.fr/assure/sante/telesante (consulté le 30 août 2022).
[3] « E-santé ou santé connectée : la santé du futur? », I-Share, 1 novembre 2017. https://www.i-share.fr/actualite/e-sante-ou-sante-connectee-la-sante-du-futur/ (consulté le 30 août 2022).

A propos de Ronaldo Tidjane Mane

Etudiant en Master 2 Commerce électronique.