Consumer Facing Health Care Systems

Consumer Healthcare empowers patients to gather information on their health state. Ideally, this is accomplished by improving the integration of existing databases and the communication of information to patients and, on demand, to care providers. Furthermore, networking of existing and new health management systems as well as a pervasive system design are essential. Consumer Healthcare services are used voluntarily and leave patients in control of their medical data. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of Consumer Healthcare articles published in leading journals in the information systems and medical informatics disciplines. This article provides a survey of the literature of this emerging field by addressing specific topics of application settings, systems features, and deployment experiences. We identified 64 articles and categorized them into four research fields (basic research, information and recommendation systems, devices, personal health records). In this article, we provide both an overview and an analysis of the literature on a broad and heterogeneous range of systems. Furthermore, we suggest areas for further research, especially on the deployment of consumer healthcare systems.