Trends "future directions" Ehealth Introduction Filetype:pdf   

·      Safety and security on the Internet. Challenges and advances in Member States, Page 1-60

 http://www.who.int/goe/publications/goe_security_web.pdf            

First helpful thing I learnt was about the internet pharmacy. I am professional pharmacist, so first thing caught my eyes was about the internet pharmacy. Internet Pharmacy for an outsider is very lucrative source to buy medications especially the drugs that has street value like Roxycodone, Dilaudid, or Viagra, or the drugs that can be misused or abused like methamphetamine or Sudafed. First internet pharmacy was opened in January 1999, and estimate says as of now it has become an industry of $50 to $75 billion. The most dangerous thing about internet pharmacy is it bypassed the law and other legislative measures and could impose the great risk on consumer and public health.

I also learnt about how internet affects the life of adolescent and children and how their safety has compromised in the virtual and online world. Due to easy and private access of internet to children and adolescent, it has become new and prominent medium for child exploitation, child maltreatment and sexual and emotional abuse. It provides child predators instant access to its potential victim. Chat rooms, online games and social networking sites are few examples which provide a platform to this kind of criminal minded people to play with the psychology of children and teenagers without disclosing their original identity and motives.

Finally, the third important thing I learnt is about the use of online health information in the developing countries like India, China and Mexico. In the developing countries online health information can play a big role because in the healthcare field information it can solve lot of problem. For example, latest epidemic Ebola. Due to online and social media, almost everybody knows that Ebola virus is contagious and how does it spread what should be done to prevent it. The problem in developing countries is that most of the online content is written in English. Almost all the popular health website like Pub med, WebMD, Druds.com, Medscape are in English. People in developing countries who are not good at English cannot utilize this important health information available online.