Architectural approaches to health information systems for empowering the subject of care.

The personal health paradigm puts the citizen in the health services business process center. This enhances the subject of care's opportunities, rights and duties regarding his/her health status and the process for maintaining and improving it. First, the citizen and his/her direct environment have to become part of the health information systems network. This implies diagnostic and therapeutic processes performed to the subject of care independent of time, location and local resources by closing the gap through appropriate mobile and miniaturized medical devices up to an implantable level. The individualization of care delivery services requires individualized diagnostic and therapeutic means based on bioinformatics and genomics methodologies. As the individual needs of a subject of care are not predictable, the system architecture must adaptively and autonomously, integrating all domains defining eHealth. Second, the architecture must be policy-controlled for empowering the subject of care, offering all privacy and security services needed. Third, embedded in the system architecture, the subject needs the knowledge presented in the right way using the right terminology to enable the intended empowerment.