Establishing the eHealth Development Association (eHDA) in Jordan reflects the state of development of eHealth, health informatics and telemedicine education, training and practices in the country. A number of national and institutional eHealth projects have been launched. Many hospitals, pharmacies and other health services have already adopted eHealth solution.
It’s high time to get the collective effort of specialists together to make a maximum impact on eHealth standardization, data privacy and security, skill development, education, research, publishing and networking.The main motive behind this voluntary effort has been the desire to build bridges of communication with specialists and interested professionals in this field and to bring about the collective effort, sharing experience, networking, developing this sector and making full use of the Jordanian, Arab and international experiences in the use of computer and telecommunication services in medicine and healthcare delivery.
The World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization adopted resolution WHA58.28 concerning eHealth in May 2005 by defining e-health as “the cost-effective and secure use of information and communication technologies in support of health and health-related fields”.Making full use of this growing trend to adopt eHealth or digital health, during 2017/2018 a number of Jordanian professionals and academicians came together to discuss the importance of establishing a Jordanian association of electronic health. Ten colleagues agreed on drafting the objectives, the framework and expected activities of the proposed association. A decision was made on 19th April 2018 approving the establishment of the Association and to formally issue the certificate of its birth by the concerned Ministries, the association is a member in the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISFTeH), membership was renewed for 2019.
The Jordanian experience in building eHealth applications and their deployment in healthcare centers, clinics and hospitals is worth studying and serious work to coordinate efforts and improve the capacity of professionals is due. All this will enable the Association to achieve its objectives in improving the quality of health services, reduce costs and increase the return on investment.