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Introduction
An integrated and practical e‐health system can serve as an essential part of an efficient and sustainable health system. An e‐health system can be used to manage and distribute information to impact health, improve efficiency and provide a vital communication and knowledge link to isolated health providers, underprivileged patients and resource‐deprived caregivers around the globe. Moreover, access to health care is increasingly being viewed as a matter of human rights (Papadimos, 2007), so for those beyond the reach of adequate care, the fair distribution of health services may be a self‐evident aspect of fairness. However these potential benefits may fail to be realized if e‐health, conceived with a Western mindset, operates in developing nations without concomitant attention to poverty reduction, global workforce challenges, human rights, and consideration of local and cultural context (Abbott and Coenen, 2008). Poverty and illiteracy in developing nations stand as major barriers to the adoption and sustainability of information technologies, and many believe it is difficult to make the case for e‐health when basic needs for survival are barely being met. The problem of e‐health uptake in developing nations is further compounded by a lack of local expertise and decades of well‐meaning but non‐sustainable ICT projects which have left a legacy of uncertainty in their wake. Issues such as these have fueled “technological apartheid” and continue to subvert the delivery of knowledge to areas of the globe that most desperately need it (Abbott, 2006).
So in what forms can the opportunities afforded by e‐health be realized in a country like Bangladesh “with insignificant natural resources, small piece of land and an unmanageably large population”? (MHHDC, 2008) And more importantly, how and who can deliver this vision? To answer this question, the Bangladesh Ministry of Health's Directorate General of Health Services and Bangladesh Enterprise Institute in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation held a three‐day futures workshop on e‐health planning, titled “Future scenario planning of HIS and e‐health in Bangladesh”. Conducted from 21st to 23rd August, 2011, the objectives of the workshop were to explore and develop the alternative futures of e‐health in Bangladesh and articulate compelling visions of the Bangladesh e‐health system[1]. The intention was to move from alternative analytic futures to preferred possibilities as well as to expose stakeholders to...