Substantial investments in eHealth development are happening in China; witness the boom of electronic health records in hospitals, health surveillance systems to monitor national and global developments in infectious and chronic diseases, and mobile biosensors to monitor patient conditions as prime examples. As technology enabled practices become more sophisticated, health professionals like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other need to be engaged and kept up with these tools for use clinically in order for eHealth to achieve the intended goals of improving access, quality and productivity for the Chinese population. Practicing health professionals and trainees would benefit from receiving training in eHealth for health service improvement and surveillance. But in what specific areas should health professionals be trained so as to accelerate eHealth adoption?
China Health Human Resources Magazine published Dr.Kendall Ho’s article entitled “Health professional training to optimize eHealth: Six essential competencies ”, the six essential competencies outlined in the article are:
- Knowledge acquisition and management
- Critical analysis and clinical reasoning and decision support
- Using technologies for health service delivery
- Intra- and Interprofessional communication and collaboration for patient centred care
- Communication with patients, the public and community
- Fundamental principles in eHealth
For the full article, please check out the magazine (PDF, 1th edition, 2013, Page 34) here (in Chinese)