Contemporary consumer health informatics.

Abstract

Over the past decade, the traditional doctor-patient relationship has been shifting to a more consultative scenario as the patient/consumer increasingly takes on a more active role in understanding, managing and making decisions about his/her health. Further, as many areas across the globe continue to face shortages of medical professionals, there is a shift towards helping those needing care to somehow help themselves. IT sits at the centre of these shifts. Increasingly, consumers rely on IT-enabled applications to access health information, resources and tools. This phenomenon has been called consumer health informatics (CHI). CHI has become a key branch of medical informatics and incorporates key concepts and constructs from various disciplines including : nursing informatics, public health, information systems, psychology, health promotion, health education, library science and communication science to name a few. Critical to CHI is a patient-centric focus.