and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the healthcare sector. The term “e” stands for electronic and "health" is used in terms of substantial, psychological, and as a resource for living a healthy life [1]. It refers not only to the nonexistence of disease but the capability to recover from illness and other problems regarding health. Genetics, surrounding environment, associations of doctors and patients are keen factors for good health. The major concern of e- health is towards providing health facilities and deliverance of relevant data through the network infrastructure and information technology [2]. Diagnosis of patient's diseases, crucial health data attainment, and analysis of the disease, support of public health workers, teleconsultation, management of patient's health and research in a specific domain are services provided by e-health to the community along with crucial healthcare throughout diverse activities. There are huge differences in healthcare and health services between the developing and the developed countries. The emphasis of the developing countries is on facilitate the citizens with quick admittance to healthcare and escalating the eminence of health at the same time as the objective of developed countries is on plummeting communal subsidy for healthcare [3]. Different developing countries such as Pakistan contain huge remote populations, but do not have the availability of appropriate medical facilities. It is important to provide health facilities in such circumstances to the citizen of remote areas. Pakistan is a progressive country where health facilities are not satisfying the need of remote areas. Pakistan has only 01 physician for every 1000 patients [4]. The sector of health is mostly not fully formed not only due to inadequate resources of government but also in the use of frequent ICT for remote communities. However, the e-Ilaj telemedicine system has been introduced in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), one of the four provinces of Pakistan to get better the eminence services of healthcare delivery for the citizen in remote areas [5]. Traditionally, when a person has some health difficulty, he/she goes to the hospital to see a doctor. The doctor needs to carefully check the patient's body 36 I. I NTRODUCTION Abstract- Provision of an effective health facility is one of the basic needs of every human being. Availability and access to such facilities reflect the social and economical growth of any country. The rapid increase in population and the resultant health-related issues are considered among the big challenges. At the same time, the exponential growth of innovations through Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are forming new dimensions in the healthcare system. E-health is a dire need especially for remote areas in developing countries like Pakistan but inadequate communication infrastructure and lacking the awareness of technology are the major hurdles yet to be addressed. Many research-based healthcare solutions have been presented in the literature to overcome such hurdles but it is still required to utilize the Viable System Model (VSM) approach for a better outcome. The proposed model would significantly reduce the workload of the overburdened fields of healthcare and emergency medical services (EMS). Moreover, the inclusion of IoT and artificial intelligence techniques in the proposed model would make significant improvements in the form of real-time monitoring of the patients and appropriate estimation of the required resources at each level of the model respectively. In comparison with the e-Ilaj telemedicine system especially, the study presents a VSM based e-health model that would overcome such hurdles by covering the future aspects like availability, accessibility, and reliability of the healthcare services at the doorstep. Keywords- E-health, Viable System Model (VSM), Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Teleconsultation, Internet of Things (IoT), E-Ilaj Telemedicine System, Telehealth, Cost-effectiveness, Artificial Intelligence. E-health is one of the most prominent services and being referred to as the utilization of Information 5 ICCC, Informatics Complex, H-8, Islamabad, Pakistan. Transformation Towards Cost-effective and Intelligent E-Health Systems: A Regional Study 1 2 3 4 5 A. Rauf , F. K. Hamdani , M. Qadir , S. Farid , M. Alam 1 Department of Computer Science, Institute of Southern Punjab, Multan, Pakistan, 2,3,4 Department of Computer Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan, 4 shahidfarid@bzu.edu.pk Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 25 No. 4-2020 ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)