The Evolution of Healthcare Applications in the Web 2.0 Era - Computational Intelligence in Healthcare: Advanced Methodologies - page 303

Table 1. Web based medical services

Web applications Purpose Services

Ask the doctor Offer medical consultation on demand E-mail

Medical chats Offer medical consultation on de-

mand, group therapy

Chat

Medical forum Offer medical consultation on de-

mand, retain archive

Forum

Ask the doctor website Archive medical consultation Dynamic Web site

Patient support websites
and mailing lists for alerts

Provide informative content, support
and prevention guidelines

Email, Static Web site

Online assessment Prevent maladies, detect additions Active Web Site

Tele-healthcare, medicine,
homecare etc.

Remotely provide clinical care, diag-
nosis, medical education

Tele-conference, Voice
and Video over IP

them to visit their doctor. Mailing lists were another solution for supporting patients
in a constant manner.
Table 1 summarizes medical applications and services delivered over the web.
Tele-healthcare, tele-medicine [14], tele-homecare and other applications make use
of Web and the whole Internet infrastructure in order to offer clinical and non-clinical
services (medical education, information and administrative services).The main aim
of these application is the transfer of medical information and advices between the
hospital and the remote patient, or the remote care provider, thus removing geo-
graphical and time zone barriers. In the same direction, interoperable medical infor-
mation systems have been developed to support exchange and utilization of medical
information across different hospitals, different healthcare providers or even across
different countries [4], [3]. Web is mainly employed to achieve better coordination of
all the participants in the medical process.
All the above applications created a critical mass of people, practitioners, patients,
care providers and care givers that requests medical information and advice in health
related issues in an everyday basis. People gathered in virtual communities and started
seeking for more flexible and collaborative solutions on their issues. The interest for
ubiquitous medical information and pervasive solutions [5], created new web applica-
tions that facilitate people in sending, processing and receiving medical information.
At the same time a lot of Web 2.0 applications and standards emerged.
The original definition of Web 2.0 by O'Reilly [18] summarizes the characteristics
of Web 2.0 applications as: (1) data sources that get richer as more people use them,
(2) collective intelligence, and (3) lightweight components and APIs that can be easily
assembled, (4) rich user experiences. Other researchers view Web 2.0 in its widest
sense, incorporating all existing web tools, user produced content (blogs, podcasts and
vidcasts), protocols and semantics that allow harnessing collective intelligence [11].
Although the definition of term Health 2.0 is still under development, it is certain
that it will stand in the common ground of social-networking and health care. Emerg-
ing internet technologies and applications aim to transform health care into a collec-
tive social service. Health 2.0 mainly focuses on actors such as patients, care-givers
and, care-providers and their roles in the collective approach [22].