Conceiving Community Knowledge Records as e-Governance Concerns in Wired Healthcare Provision

Abstract

This article investigates the potential of community knowledge records (CKRs) in the electronic transformation for healthcare provision in Macau. Of specific interest is the electronic governance (e-governance) context to examine the various information and communications technologies (ICTs) for personalized healthcare support, such as the electronic health (or e-health) records (EHR). From a governance perspective, the installation of ICT-based e-health support must begin with the healthcare concerns of citizens. The challenge is to identify the organizational context of e-health provision, lying in the realm of e-governance, and referring mainly to the decisions that define expectations, enable empowerment, and verify performance of the systems involved. The goal of this chapter is to explore the context of citizens’ e-health provision, including the EHRs considered as the digital records of personal medical history, accumulated from cradle to death. Elaborated are the issues of privacy that must be rendered in proper perspective where e-governance is to install a trustworthy electronic system of healthcare administration. The discussion around the e-governance concerns of any attempt to install e-health services based on the legitimate use of personal EHRs, should provide a sense-making perspective to interpret the e-health challenge of the contemporary knowledge society.