ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that provider organizations should consider their consumer/patient facing website as a digital health technology and incorporate their website as part of their digital health strategy. It argues that healthcare provider organizations can advance the engagement of the populations they serve by purposely leveraging their organization’s website as a tool of health empowerment. The book addresses the first and foundational functional domain in the Health Empowerment Web Strategy IndexTM framework, Orienting. The flow of communication under the Aligning domain is necessarily bidirectional, with opportunities for website visitor-initiated communications more extensive than one would see under the Orienting or Enlightening domains. The intent of Enlightening is to help foster a deep personal and social understanding about a particular health topic, by aiding website visitors in contextualizing individual health needs/interests to an external resource.
