Includes all the ICTs tools and services for health used behind the scenes by healthcare professionals, or directly by patients, which contribute to improve the health of citizens all over the world. Through the ICTs, the responsible authorities want to enhance healthcare quality and reduce healthcare costs, by improving the efficiency with which healthcare is delivered and reducing the delivery of services with little or no value ( European Commission, 2004 ).
Published in Chapter:
Why and How Did Health Economics Appear? Who Were the Main Authors? What is the Role of ITCs in its Development?
Ana Pinto Borges (Universidade do Porto, & NIDISAG, Portugal) and Erika Laranjeira (Universidade do Porto, Portugal)
Copyright: © 2013
|Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-3990-4.ch051
Abstract
Over the past sixty years, developed countries have registered high growth of total expenditure on health, which has attracted the attention of health economists, organizations, and policymakers alike. At the same time, the authors observe the increasingly important role of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), not only in improving diagnosis and treatment and the quality of information, but also in the growth of these expenditures. According to this scenario, the authors focus on the development of Health Economics as an autonomous branch within Economics, highlighting not only its origin and the leading authors that began to write about it, but also the impact and the role of the development of ICTs on Health Economics and healthcare.