Are doctors the structural weakness in the e‐health building?

Progressive evaluations by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrate that health care is now or becoming unaffordable. This means nations must change the way they manage health care. The costly nature of health care in most nations, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) seems independent of the national funding models. Increasing evidence is demonstrating that the lack of involvement by clinicians (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, ancillary care and patients) in e-health projects is a major factor for the costly failures of many of these projects. The essential change in focus required to improve healthcare delivery using e-health technologies has to be on clinical care. To achieve this change clinicians must be involved at all stages of e-health implementations. From a clinicians perspective medicine is not a business. Our business is clinical medicine and e-health must be focussed on clinical decision making. This paper views the roles of physicians in e-health structural reforms.