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TopAs the global population rises and life expectancy rates around the world continue to increase due to advances in science and technology and improvements to socio-environmental conditions, healthcare budgets are facing enormous pressure. On the 21st of November 1986, the Ottawa Charter initiated the advocacy of health promotion to improve healthcare globally (WHO, 1986). Health promotion is based on the premise that healthcare cannot be the sole responsibility of the health sector and therefore seeks to provide patients with better control over their health through information, health education, and life enhancing skills (Eriksson & Lindström, 2008). The benefit of empowering patients is not limited to the cost reduction of healthcare, but is also a risk mitigation factor for disease as well as a health-enhancing strategy.
Over the years, ICT began to be integrated into health systems and services worldwide. During the 1990s, e-commerce emerged and enabled new ways to conduct transactions via the Internet. eHealth was also enabled by the Internet. The term eHealth refers to the use of information and communication technologies to improve health and the health care system (Oh, Rizo, Enkin & Jadad, 2005). The Internet refers to the globally connected network of computers. Although the term Internet is used interchangeably with World Wide Web or ‘the Web’, the World Wide Web refers to multimedia-based documents that can be accessed online, over the Internet (Lupton, 2014). This became known as the Web 1.0 era or the so-called brochure web era. The Web 1.0 era began rapidly in 1990s because of the availability of browsers with user-friendly graphical interfaces. The World Wide Web had become a valuable channel for accessing and seeking health information. Rapid improvement in communication, hardware and software technologies also led to new and better health service offerings via the Internet. By the early 2000s, there was a noticeable shift in the use of the web and the development of web-based applications. This was termed Web 2.0 and involves users creating, organizing, sharing, critiquing and updating content. Web 2.0 connects people and content in unique ways. Web 2.0 facilitates an ‘architecture of participation’ – a design that encourages user interaction, empowerment and community contributions. Popular Web 2.0 applications include Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. By the mid-2000s, Healthcare 2.0 emerged to take advantage of the network of Web 2.0 applications and services delivered through the Web platform. Health 2.0 uses social networking sites, blogs, email list services, online communities, podcasts, search, tagging, videos, and wikis to personalize health care and to collaborate and promote health education (Lupton, 2014).
Recent advances in processor, memory, and disk storage capacity have made digital devices relatively inexpensive and access to online platforms have become more ubiquitous. Consequently, increasingly smaller digital devices from the personal computer to the tablet to smartphones to wearable computers are being been used in healthcare (Lupton, 2015). m-Health or mobile health is defined as the use of mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices to support health practices (Bert, Giacometti, Gualano & Siliquini, 2014). For example, tracking devices can be used to monitor a patient’s calorie consumption, exercise and metabolic rate. These devices are being integrated with social media to provide support and motivation. Experts predict that the Web will evolve into Web 3.0 or the ‘SemanticWeb’ (Giustini, 2007). The Semantic Web aims to improve upon the meaningfulness of information on the Web thereby improving cooperation between digital devices, healthcare practitioners and patients.