Purpose and potential impact

eHealth is becoming the third industrial pillar for health, behind the pharmaceutical industry and medical imaging, to reach an estimated 5% of all healthcare expenditures by the year 2010. Telemedicine and eHealth hold huge potential to increase productivity in today’s patient- and hospital-centred healthcare delivery systems, and will pay a fundamental role for engineering a new concept in tomorrow’s citizen- and home-centred health systems. eHealth can empower patients and improve healthcare. Even more importantly, by reducing the scope for medical errors, it can save lives.

Much of today’s medicine and healthcare is highly collaborative and inter-disciplinary and is thus increasingly reliant on distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. If there is one thing that typifies such collaborations it is the need to access and visualize huge amounts of data which requires huge computing resources. Grid architecture may well be the enabler of this “virtual world” vision as it represents an infrastructure that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions and resources.

Telemedicine can be defined as the delivery of healthcare services, where distance is a critical factor, by all healthcare professionals using information and communications technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, research and evaluation, and for the continuing education of healthcare providers, all in the interest of advancing the health of individuals and their communities. The potential for Grid technology to enhance and improve telemedicine and eHealth on a world scale is huge. It seems appropriate to state that the application of Grid technology for eHealth purposes represents a fusion of technology needs and technology enablement which will deliver huge benefits to the innovativeness of the world healthcare.

The strategic impact of the publication is highly significant. This publication will demonstrate the capability of Grid technology to improve the delivery of patient care, the long-term sustainability of telemedicine, a smart use of networks in order to guarantee secure and high-quality circulation of transmitted information and focus on the patient’s privilege. The publication by addressing these strategic and critical issues will contribute to ensuring the reliability and durability of telemedicine.

In keeping with the scientific and technical objectives of this present publication, it will significantly contribute to the creation and development of national and international standards. In addition the publication will focus particular attention on the following:
· Identification of policies for eHealth and Telemedicine and strategies for their implementation.
· Standardization policies.