ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that health communicators from a variety of disciplines have been investing much time and effort in this area, and this investment has quickly led to an emerging, interdisciplinary field, the field of eHealth. It discusses what the eHealth field is, what people know from extant research, and how they know it. The chapter explains different types of eHealth applications and some exemplar studies from this field, and describes applications in real world settings. Health communicators have long been interested in using computers for health promotion, and there are many early examples of such applications. Internet-based interventions can be described as “primarily self-guided, interactive Web-based programs, created with the goals of assisting users to make behavior changes that will prevent disease, monitor health status, and/or improve response to clinical treatment”. Effective health games have been designed and evaluated in several different areas, including healthy diet, physical activity, asthma management, and cancer remission.
