Editorial

摘要

In this issue of Health Policy and Technology, we present themed content on 'Electronic Health Records across the Nations' by Ton AM Spil and Leigh Cellucci. The editors of this issue present seven research papers covering the health systems in North America and across European countries including Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. So what is 'eHealth?' A definition provided by the European Commission [1] suggests that, "eHealth means using digital tools and services for health. eHealth covers the interaction between patients and health-service providers, institution-to-institution transmission of data, or peer-to-peer communication between patients and/or health professionals". At the technical level, eHealth includes health information networks, electronic health records (EHRs), electronic patient records (EPRs), personal health records (PHRs), telemedicine, wearable and portable devices and healthcare apps (of which there are now over 100,000 [2] downloadable apps for personal computers and mobile phones).