Connecting Health Immersion of Digital into eHealth

Hussey, Pamela

Globally, in most countries the deployment and integration of national eHealth programmes is at an advanced stage. Digital progression in society is recognised as inevitable. Consequently, there is a growing awareness amongst nurse leaders for prioritisation of strategies relating to digital leadership and use of informatics competencies within the profession. As artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics progress at an accelerated rate in society, thought leaders and policy makers turn their attention to consider how such technology can support healthy behaviors and health care delivery. Considerable efficiencies have been realised by deployment of digital in specific business domains such as fast food outlets, the hospitality and transport industries. Automation of passenger check in for example through air travel security has realised better use of staff time in processing of routine tasks and functions. The natural question is can such efficiencies be realised in the domain of healthcare? Large-scale deployment of digital within the health care domain lags somewhat behind other industries. Health administrations engaged with strategic business cases are deliberating on how the digital transformation can assist with planned service improvements from a macro, meso, and micro systems perspective. A key enabler in targeted service planning is the need to advance shared patient centric integrated care through interdisciplinary care service delivery. In this chapter we consider from a practical perspective the seismic impact of digital health, and how it will influence contemporary nursing practice. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this chapter (10.1007/978-3-030-58740-6_2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.