Summary
Objective:
The OECD countries are facing a set of core challenges; an increasing elderly population;
increasing number of chronic and lifestyle-related diseases; expanding scope of what
medicine can do; and increasing lack of medical professionals. Pervasive healthcare
asks how pervasive computing technology can be designed to meet these challenges.
The objective of this paper is to discuss ‘pervasive healthcare’ as a research field
and tries to establish how novel and distinct it is, compared to related work within
biomedical engineering, medical informatics, and ubiquitous computing.
Methods:
The paper presents the research questions, approach, technologies, and methods of
pervasive healthcare and discusses these in comparison to those of other related scientific
disciplines.
Results:
A set of central research themes are presented; monitoring and body sensor networks;
pervasive assistive technologies; pervasive computing for hospitals; and preventive
and persuasive technologies. Two projects illustrate the kind of research being done
in pervasive healthcare. The first project is targeted at home-based monitoring of
hypertension; the second project is designing context-aware technologies for hospitals.
Both projects approach the healthcare challenges in a new way, apply a new type of
research method, and come up with new kinds of technological solutions. ‘Clinical
proof-of-concept’ is recommended as a new method for pervasive healthcare research;
the method helps design and test pervasive healthcare technologies, and in ascertaining
their clinical potential before large-scale clinical tests are needed.
Conclusion:
The paper concludes that pervasive healthcare as a research field and agenda is novel;
it is addressing new emerging research questions, represents a novel approach, designs
new types of technologies, and applies a new kind of research method.
Keywords
Pervasive healthcare - clinical proof-of-concept - research - method - pervasive computing
- ubiquitous computing
