title: [Living a good live with e-health: anticipating ethical consequences and monitoring them].
abstract: E-health incorporates a range of digital techniques that are interlinked because they promise to improve people's health and quality of life. The question of how these techniques actually contribute to "living a good live" is not so easy to answer, because scientific, commercial and patients' perspectives all come into play. Research on the unintended consequences of e-health applications clearly shows that it is necessary to anticipate social consequences as early as in the design phase. However, because it is not possible to predict some outcomes, it is also necessary to properly monitor how these techniques affect daily life. It is crucial to pay attention to how these techniques affect people with different educational backgrounds.. Digital techniques have a great capacity to democratise healthcare, but may also unintentionally increase health inequalities. The ethical consequences of e-health applications need to be anticipated and monitored in order to prevent this happening as much as possible.
authors.affiliation: Universiteit Maastricht, afd. Health, Ethics and Society, Maastricht.
authors.forename: Klasien
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Horstman
mesh_terms: D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated / Q000941:ethics*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000941:ethics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011788:Quality of Life