Introduction

Confronting quality-of-care problems and achieving cost containment in healthcare delivery is one of the greatest challenges for the twenty-first century. Realising the promise of eHealth for ensuring sustainability of Europe’s healthcare systems is becoming urgent. When seen in a context of increasing needs for health personnel, growth in chronic disease, an ageing population and a consequential expected rise in public health expenditures, the successful utilisation of information and communication technologies becomes crucial. The eHealth Strategies Report prepared on behalf of the European Commission, Directorate General Information Society and Media, in 2011, points to implementation as a key challenge: “Reaching agreement about eHealth strategies and, even more so, implementing them has almost everywhere proven to be considerable more complex and time-consuming than initially anticipated. The complexity of eHealth as a management challenge was vastly underestimated.” (Stroetmann et al. 2011). If we want substantial advancements in healthcare information infrastructures, we need knowledge on actual experiences, and the contributions in this book aim to give the readers a better grip on what facilitates and hinders successful implementation and utilization.