LAUSR

Thank you very much for your interest and your valuable comments on our article ‘‘The potential of eHealth in otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery: patients’ perspectives’’ [1]. The authors strongly believe that further integration of eHealth in the field of otorhinolaryngology (ORL) will follow the typical characteristics of a disruptive innovation. This is the reason why we assume that eHealth has the fundamental potential to improve quality and safety as well as efficacy and efficiency of care and patient engagement. An essential basis for this is that the use of eHealth applications may allow not only the patients, but also the otorhinolaryngologists to get a better understanding of the ORL diseases and therefore can support the diagnostic decision-making and treatment processes. These positive effects of eHealth have already been shown in other medical fields [2, 3]. Because many eHealth applications are developed by young information technology (IT) savvy and healthy people, they often fail to show continuous use and improvement in intersectoral patient care [4]. Therefore, we recommend that eHealth applications in the field of ORL be developed by interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams based on the users’—the patients’ and health-care providers’—needs. Furthermore, experts in data safety, data security, data availability and interface experts for selected and secure transfer of personal medical information between common IT systems, as well as clinical quality and risk managers, health service researchers and health economic experts must be integrated in the development and implementation processes of eHealth applications in ORL. Successful eHealth projects in ORL essentially require clearly defined professional objectives with measurable and predefined outcome parameters regarding patient safety, treatment quality, treatment outcome and health-care costs. In addition to a high usability for ORL patients and physicians to support their engagement, eHealth applications must also meet the highest standards of data security, data safety and data availability for personal medical information and provide standardized interfaces to common IT systems used by otorhinolaryngologists. Though eHealth applications may also contribute to the reduction of health-care costs (e.g., by reduced travel costs or online transfer of discharge summaries), multiple reward and especially adequate reimbursement systems, research funding and a closer focus on eHealth topics by the ORL societies are needed to support the development of the disruptive innovation to benefit patients and health-care providers in the field of ORL.