ABC of health informatics: eHealth and the future: Promise or peril?

The balance of benefits and risks of eHealth for individual patients and clinicians over the next two to three years is unclear. Healthcare organisations and policy makers need to consider the issues that will arise. In the long term, eHealth offers many opportunities for prevention, choice, home based care, and chronic disease management, and it will widen access to health care for most patients. We all need to join the discussion and decide what we want for the future before others, who could be guided by commercial motives rather than quality and equity, do so.