Patients and Organizations eHealth Services Model

Abstract

The current Finnish public hospitals’ eHealth services are organization-oriented rather than patient-oriented. Patients remain passive and use eHealth services that are designed by private or governmental organizations. Patients had little or no involvement in that process. This paper introduces a novel eHealth Services Model that can be used as a tool to capture the needs of both organizations and patients. Two eHealth services were used to verify and support the validity of the presented model. The first eHealth service features came from an existing Finnish eHealth service that was designed by a Finnish organization. The second eHealth service features have been derived from the collected patients’ feedback. A survey was carried out to compare the selected two eHealth services features. The finding of this paper suggests that an eHealth service with features that capture patients’ needs is favorable against the eHealth service features that came from a Finnish organization. The presented model is a long-term solution that can be utilized in designing and providing the right technologies and services that will continuously satisfy the needs of patients and organizations.