Health Information on the Internet

Electronic Health (e-Health) increasingly strives to provide health information and services to healthcare stakeholders via the Internet, and to actively involve patients in their care. One major chance for these participatory healthcare and patient-centered approaches that integrate patients in healthcare are the phenomena and ideas associated with providing information and healthcare on the Internet. This paper examines the existing body of knowledge on online health information and explores the current state of research through a review of literature as well as past and current research projects. The fundamental categories of the analysis represent the stakeholders in the healthcare sector, the connecting information flows, the information-transferring technological applications, as well as the categories of the TEMPEST model. Based on these findings, causes and future research fields are discussed. The technological category has the largest share of all categories. Based on these findings, causes and future research fields are discussed.