Robert Rudowski
Department of Medical Informatics and Telemedicine
Medical University of Warsaw
Robert.Rudowski@amwaw.edu.pl

Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Health
Care

The use of ICT in health care is defined as electronic health
(eHealth/telemedicine). Italy is the cradle of telemedicine as the
medical assistance from the International Radio Medical Centre to the
crews of sea going ships started here in 1935.
ICT brought spectacular achievements to medical diagnostics. Two well
known imaging techniques computer tomography (CT) and magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) are based on computer reconstruction of
images from measurement data. The inventors of both techniques won
Nobel prizes (Cormack, Hounsfield - 1979 (CT), 
Lauterbur, Mansfield - 2003 (MRI)).
ICT has an impact on many aspects of health care. The most important
are accessibility to health care services by citizens, economical
aspect and quality of care aspect.
The main goal is to provide access for the citizen at any time and in
any place. eHealth can certainly provide such an access especially in
the regions where physician may not be available. 
The continuously rising costs are the main problem of the contemporary
health service in many countries. These costs may not be acceptable
both for developing and developed countries. eHealth can decrease the
costs of health care by decentralizing the care - enabling medical
services at a lower level where they are cheaper (e.g. regional
hospital instead of university hospital), or by avoiding patient
transport to the hospital when it is not necessary. 
The improvement of the quality of care has been demonstrated in
several medical disciplines e.g. cardiology. The transmission of ECG
signal directly from the ambulance to invasive cardiology centre
significantly improved Acute Coronary Syndromes patient diagnostics
and reduced time from the onset of symptoms to intervention. 
In developed countries the phenomenon of ageing population is evident.
It is estimated that the cost of health care of that group is 60% of
the total cost. How eHealth can cope with that problem? The answer is
by home monitoring and telecare. The patient data can be trans mitted
over the cellular phones to the medical centre and evaluated by the
physician. Home monitoring is applied in many types of diseases such
as cardiac failure, hypertension, diabetes, COPD. The preliminary
results show that in many patients the number of exacerbations and
hospitalizations is decreased. The care is therefore improved and
costs diminished.
eHealth can cope with the deficit of medical staff in developing and
the developed countries. Teleradiology is a good example. The images
are transmitted to the location where radiologist on duty is
available.
ICT has an impact on education of both patients and medical staff.
There are many www sites aiming at prevention of civilization
diseases (diabetes, hypertension, cardiac failure, cancer). They can
support groups of patients suffering from the same disease (e.g.
cancer patients). The effect of e-learning cannot be overestimated as
far as medical education is concerned. There are many e-learning
courses and videoconferences on variety of topics. The Medical
Virtual Universities are established. The best model of learning for
medical sciences is blended learning. It is a combination of
traditional learning with e-learning. The contact with a real patient
is a core of the learning process in medicine.