Resumen

SANCHEZ TARRAGO, Nancy. Crossroads and certainties of the use of the Internet in the public health. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2012, vol.38, suppl.5, pp. 748-758. ISSN 0864-3466.

Internet and other information technologies are ever increasingly present in numerous fields of the contemporary social and economic life, including health-related processes and activities. The public health is focused on the prevention and control of the diseases that affect the human populations and it uses more and more informatic applications based on Internet for health surveillance, prediction of behavior of diseases, analysis and visualization of morbidity and mortality data, design of health interventions and promotion, as well as for planning of services and resources. However, there are ethical, political, socio-economic and socio-technical challenges that will be necessary to overcome in order to take advantage of those web-based applications. This article briefly reviewed the crossroads and certainties of the use of Internet in the field of public health.

Palabras clave : Internet; web-based applications; public health.

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