ABSTRACT
What are health, health informatics and e-health, and how do they all fit together? Health is a complex social phenomenon. Health is not just about medicine or the practice of medical methods by doctors. Health is much broader than just medicine, inextricably related to political, economic, legal, environmental and social issues through time. Evidence of this argument is provided by the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of health:
. . . a state of complete physical mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, is a fundamental human right and that the attainment of the highest possible level of health is a most important world wide social goal whose realisation requires action of many social and economic sectors in addition to the health sector}
From the outset, this implies a broader approach to the study of health which goes beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Health is not the exclusive domain of medical practitioners. Thus, it is argued that health informatics, which is defined as ' . . . an umbrella term used to encompass the rapidly evolving discipline of using computers, networking and communications - methodology and techno logy - to support health related fields . . . '2 rather than medical informatics. Health informatics is more reflective of an approach that tries to embrace a multidisciplinary approach to the study of healthcare provision. This is not to deny the importance of medical clinicians; however, health needs to be viewed as a partnership made up of network alliances involving many actors. The following definition of primary healthcare has been adopted:
primary care is the provision of integrated, accessible healthcare services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal
healthcare needs, developing sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community.3
