eHealth: Connecting Health Care and Public Health

Reducing risks and improving benefits to the patients are requirements health professionals are faced with in their daily work. Furthermore, cuts in health funds and the competition for budgets require to enhancing efficacy and efficiency of health services. For meeting both challenges, adequate information and knowledge is needed, which can be gathered from documentation systems such as Electronic Health Records or Personal Health Records (PHRs), but also by performing dedicated clinical studies such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or cohort studies. Based on a literature analysis, quality of, and benefits from, RCTs have been analyzed. The benefits from connecting public health and PHRs are discussed in some details.