Consumer+Health+Informatics

=  Consumer Health Informatics = 

Description: // Consumer Health Informatics is the branch of medical informatics that analyses consumers’ needs for information; studies and implements methods of making information accessible to consumers; and models and integrates consumers’ preferences into medical information systems.* //

The idea of Consumer Health Informatics or (CHI) is providing patients with e-health tools. E-health tools are the practice of using the internet to communicate with a health care provider to process, or access health records. These e-health tools also allow an easy way to exchange data through different healthcare providers.

Consumer Health Informatic tools can be described as tools that perform the following:
 * 1) Primarily designed to interact with health information users or consumers (anyone who seeks or uses health care information for nonprofessional work).
 * 2) Interacts directly with the consumer who provides personal health information to the CHI system and receives personalized health information from the tool application or system.
 * 3) Is one in which the data, information, recommendations or other benefits provided to the consumer, may be used with a healthcare professional, but is not dependent on a healthcare professional.

Applications: Consumer Health Information has several useful applications. These are some of the e-health tools used in a (CHI) system. In __Electronic__ __Medical Records__ the e-health tools allow quick and easy way for health care providers to send and receive data to each other about patients.Another application the (CHI) e-health tools provide is __Telemedicine__ which allows medical information to be transferred over a telephone line or the internet. This process will allow for two or more medical care professional to collaborate on a patients diagnosis and treatment. One more insistence these e-health tools open the door for is __m-health__ this will let a mobile device collect data on a patient and have real time updates sent to health care professional(s).

Web resources: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7251/1713 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_health_informatics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Medical_Records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemedicine <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHealth

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32643/#erta188.ch1.s1

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Citations/References: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7251/1713 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Graphics: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Picture resource: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://xseries.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/06/82407healthmonitor.jpg