ABSTRACT
With such a long history of application of information technologies in healthcare, it issurprising that communication technologies have only recently become a focus for attention. It is difficult to explain this delay, but it may well reflect the perception that communication processes for the most part are considered human processes. Technology, when it has been used, has been relatively simple and disappeared into the background. The telephone, for example, is an unremarkable and commonplace item in most people’s working day. The enthusiasm and novelty associated with its introduction a century ago have disappeared. In contrast, the development of information technologies dominated most of the second half of the twentieth century.
