Health telematics: a challenge for healthcare quality

Better access to medical information seems necessary to improve the coordination of medical professionals and the quality of care. As a consequence, health telematics is a striking challenge for: 1.Communication between professionals. Many experiences of professional networks around the world demonstrate the feasibility and the benefits of such an electronic communication between doctors, nurses, hospitals, labs. 2. Communication between professionals and their patients. Are the professionals ready to provide their patients with relevant info? 3. Better coordination of tasks and actions. This would result in an improvement of the efficiency of any healthcare system. Health telematics could be one of the technical devices to attain this objective. 4. To improve communication and coordination means that professionals have to share the same information basis. It is time to examine the possibility for all professionals, around the world, to share a common patient medical record. Challenges are high. But is it possible ? Is it feasible? Do we really know what could be a common shared medical record? Medical professionals have to appropriate these technologies to use them as best as possible for the benefits of their patients.