Transformation Towards Cost Effective and Intelligent E-Health Systems: A Regional Study

Abstract

The provision of an effective health facility is one of the basic needs of every human being. Availability and access to such facilities reflect the social and economical growth of any country. The rapid increase in population and the resultant health-related issues are considered as big challenges. At the same time, the exponential growth of innovations through Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are forming new dimensions in the healthcare system. E-health is a dire need especially for remote areas in developing countries like Pakistan but inadequate communication infrastructure and lacking the awareness of technology are the major hurdles yet to be addressed. Many research-based healthcare solutions have been presented in the literature to overcome such hurdles but it is still required to utilize the Viable System Model (VSM) approach for a better outcome. The proposed model would significantly reduce the workload of the overburdened fields of healthcare and emergency medical services (EMS). Moreover, the inclusion of IoT and artificial techniques in the proposed model would make significant improvements in the form of real-time monitoring of the patients and appropriate estimation of the required resources at each level of the model respectively. The study presents a VSM based e-health model that would overcome such hurdles by covering the future aspects like availability, accessibility, and reliability of the healthcare services at the doorstep.