Health

Health and Human Development

e-Health Initiatives

We define e-health as the use of ICTs, locally and at a distance, to strengthen health systems and address public health priorities.

E-health has the potential to increase the efficiency of health systems and to improve access, especially in remote areas, for marginalised or excluded populations, people with disabilities and the elderly. It can be used to improve service quality, and can also reduce the cost of health care delivery by reducing redundancy and duplication and introducing economies of scale.

E-health is being promoted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, not as a stand-alone programme but as support to the ongoing efforts to strengthen health systems.

Objective

Our objective is to strengthen the delivery of health care in Commonwealth countries by supporting the development and implementation of national and regional policies and strategies.

Relevance

Our work is relevant because the issues we address concern some of the biggest disease and health system challenges on the global health agenda. We can broker consensus between the developed and developing countries that make up the Commonwealth. We can also collect and articulate the issues of relevance to small states enabling them to play an active role in the global debate on health.