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The interface he@lth/internet: perspectives and challenges

Information and communication technology (ICT) through the Internet are changed into elements, processes and objects produced in order to be used by human bio-sciences relating to the practice of BioMedicine, such as Public Health. ICT has been covering increasingly large fields of medical information, producing specialization sectors known as telemedicine, cyber-medicine and the so-called consumer healthcare information technology. It tries to meet consumers' information needs, by apparently creating something similar to self-treatment with some degree of expertise. In this way, consumers would be able to make more ' informed' decisions in terms of their purchases in the healthcare field. In order to attain this objective, computer programs have come up with decision aids software for healthcare and Web semantics have been created. The mingling of three powers that participate in the mechanisms that organize present-day life is clear - the predominance of instrumental reasoning and its techno-scientific production, the power created by the union of institutions and ideologies, and the belief in the myths, symbols and rites of scientific technology. As a possible result, we may see society colonized by an alliance between authorities that produce specialized knowledge, professionals that apply this knowledge to produce technological items or package them in technological wrappings, by industrial systems and by information, distribution and commercial networks.

Internet; computer science and Medicine; tele-medicine; health care; health promotion


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