LAUSR

For decades, the notion of eHealth has carried great promise of improved efficiency and quality of care through information technology (IT)-based capabilities. Along these lines, several strategies have been put into place to implement eHealth in practice. However, a recurring challenge is how eHealth technologies have proven considerably more complex and time-consuming to implement than initially anticipated. This is the starting point for the highly knowledgeable book ‘Information Infrastructures within European Health Care: Working with the Installed Base’ that deals with the on-going challenges and strategies of implementing eHealth technologies in real clinical practice across Europe. With a broad approach to the notion of eHealth, the editors include technologies such as Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs), which play a central role in health institutions, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), radiology information systems (RIS), computerised physician order entry (CPOE), electronic medication management systems (EMMS) and laboratory systems (LAB). A common pattern is that many of these technologies frequently have faced serious problems when confronted with real practice. The book is organised in three sections: Part I ‘Information Infrastructures in Healthcare’ presents the empirical domain of the book, the context of eHealth infrastructures, the core theoretical concepts, and the cross-case analysis of the cases. Part II ‘E-Prescription Infrastructures’ contains six chapters analysing various European experiences with putting in place eHealth infrastructures. The empirical studies on e-prescription are from Spain, Norway, Greece, the United Kingdom and Germany. Part III ‘Governmental Patient-Oriented eHealth Infrastructures’ contains five empirical chapters on governmental platforms for patient-oriented eHealth services from Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Italy. The organisation of the book is excellent, as the conceptual backbone of the book on Information Infrastructure is assembled in part I together with the associated 747383 JHI0010.1177/1460458217747383Health Informatics JournalBook Review book-review2017