Education as ehealth infrastructure: considerations in advancing a national agenda for ehealth

Sonya Hilberts, Kathleen Gray

This paper explores the role of education as infrastructure in large-scale ehealth strategies-in theory, in international practice and in one national case study. Education is often invisible in the documentation of ehealth infrastructure. Nevertheless a review of international practice shows that there is significant educational investment made in implementing national ehealth agendas. Disparate views about the role of education are implicit in the ehealth strategy literature, while there is a shortage of evidence-based accounts of ehealth education. In the case of Australia, the benefits and challenges of a broadly collaborative approach to ehealth education are highlighted through activities of various types occurring on many levels to support the implementation of a national ehealth system. This paper concludes that although evidence-based practice is a given in other areas of healthcare, and although there are many published evaluations of ehealth usability and acceptance in the health informatics literature, there is surprisingly little evidence about what works and doesn't work with regard to the ehealth education.