What is a health system?
A national health system is a complex system established by public policy to achieve certain socioeconomic goals. The complex components--structure and instruments--used to establish the architecture of a health system is determined by political, institutional and economic considerations. Setting a system’s goals is strongly influenced by the social ethics embraced by a society. The accountability and monitoring of a health system’s performance require measurement and evaluation. Therefore, the intellectual core of health systems study comes from the intersection of several disciplines—ethics, politics, economics, and evaluation sciences.