Title: SUMMERY OF MAIN RESULTS

Summery of main results

There seems to be a lot of diversity in the deployment and use of the electronic health records and electronic health cards. Variety can be related to specific necessities in the institutional fields (e.g. primary or secondary line of care, centralized or decentralized systems).

Although the countries indicate that the collection and processing of medical data must foremost be seen in the light of simplified communications between healthcare professionals and between healthcare professionals and patients, as well as in the light of cost-effective and efficient health care delivery, it can not be denied that eHealth tools (will) facilitate profiling practices to a bigger circle of parties.

In general terms too little attention is being paid to the particular nature of health care, as a sociological, cultural, political and economic construct. Health care is not like other industries; moreover it is directly related to welfare issues. Universal access, social justice and quality of the healthcare systems are aspects which must be taken into account before designing and implementing eHealth. Socio-technical choices in health care have to be made within the specific normative, regulative and cultural context of regions or nations. In European democratic societies, this necessarily implies multifaceted balancing practices.