Full speed ahead to the City on the Hill (original) (raw)

Mobile health: the power of wearables, sensors, and apps to transform clinical trials

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2016

Mobile technology has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, and the practical utility of mobile devices for improving human health is only now being realized. Wireless medical sensors, or mobile biosensors, are one such technology that is allowing the accumulation of real-time biometric data that may hold valuable clues for treating even some of the most devastating human diseases. From wearable gadgets to sophisticated implantable medical devices, the information retrieved from mobile technology has the potential to revolutionize how clinical research is conducted and how disease therapies are delivered in the coming years. Encompassing the fields of science and engineering, analytics, health care, business, and government, this report explores the promise that wearable biosensors, along with integrated mobile apps, hold for improving the quality of patient care and clinical outcomes. The discussion focuses on groundbreaking device innovation, data optimization and validation,...

From computers to ubiquitous computing by 2010: health care

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 2008

Over the past decade, miniaturization and cost reduction in semiconductors have led to computers smaller in size than a pinhead with powerful processing abilities that are affordable enough to be disposable. Similar advances in wireless communication, sensor design and energy storage have meant that the concept of a truly pervasive 'wireless sensor network', used to monitor environments and objects within them, has become a reality. The need for a wireless sensor network designed specifically for human body monitoring has led to the development of wireless 'body sensor network' (BSN) platforms composed of tiny integrated microsensors with on-board processing and wireless data transfer capability. The ubiquitous computing abilities of BSNs offer the prospect of continuous monitoring of human health in any environment, be it home, hospital, outdoors or the workplace. This pervasive technology comes at a time when Western world health care costs have sharply risen, reflected by increasing expenditure on health care as a proportion of gross domestic product over the last 20 years. Drivers of this rise include an ageing post 'baby boom' population, higher incidence of chronic disease and the need for earlier diagnosis. This paper outlines the role of pervasive health care technologies in providing more efficient health care.

DISCUSSION PAPER: Tracking biosensors: new-emerging markets in healthcare and self care

EU policy programmes promoting eHealth and mHealth, promise flexible and more personalized care and greater citizen responsibility in managing disease and staying healthy. It is not clear however, how the ICT-based and mobile technologies will affect public health targets and healthcare in the long term. Following Lupton (2013) on enhancement and healthist discourses, our interest in this development concerns the spread of wearable sensors aimed at fitness and health-as-leisure. We examine a set of devices and associated services, including the use of social media to share data and care-relevant knowledge. We explore issues of function and control, of intelligibility and the making of informational bodies and person-hood through media ritual against a backdrop of assumptions about health enhancement. We argue that market successes to-date should be viewed in reference to value creation rooted in cultural trends and traits, not the efficacy, improved healthcare or cost savings promised in policy documents. What is left to account for however, are the ambiguities in the development of business models in quasi-medical markets without adequate legal framework, and who thrive on the mass marketing of data acquisition and gadget use which to-date has largely escaped regulation.

EMBC Workshop Telemedicine and Telemonitoring in AAL Home Environments : 41st Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMB) Conference : July 23, 2019 Berlin, Germany : proceedings of EMBC Workshop "Telemedicine and Telemonitoring in AAL Home Environments

2019

Information and communication technologies support telemedicine to lower health access barriers and to provide better health care. While the potential in Active Assisted Living (AAL) is increasing, it is difficult to evaluate its benefits for the user, and it requires coordinated actions to launch it. The European Commission's action plan 2012–2020 provides a roadmap to patient empowerment and healthcare, to link up devices and technologies, and to invest in research towards the personalized medicine of the future. As a quickly developing area in medicine, telemonitoring is a demanding field in research and development. Telemonitoring is an essential component of personalized medicine, where health providers can obtain precise information on outcare or chronic patients to improve diagnosis and therapy and also help healthy persons with prevention support. Telemonitoring combines mobile and wearable devices with the personal AAL home environment, a private or (partly) supervised ...

Making Sense of Sensors: How New Technologies Can Change Patient Care

2013

This report describes the early phase of development and adoption of passive sensors - sensors that do not require active engagement for their use or data transmission - for patient care outside the hospital; it assesses the current landscape, the drivers and barriers and the promise of these technologies which could proliferate in patients' daily lives to support healthy lifestyles, self-care, and more personalized medicine, yet be almost invisible to the user

Industry Study for Personal Health Monitoring

2015

Recent years have seen an influx of medical technologies capable of remotely monitoring the health and behaviours of individuals to detect, manage and prevent health problems. Known collectively as ‘Personal Health Monitoring’ (PHM), these systems are intended to supplement medical care with health monitoring outside traditional care environments such as hospitals. In the face of ageing demographics across the EU, such technologies are seen as a promising way to close the predicted gap between healthcare demand and resources. Medical care and monitoring currently provided by humans may be supplemented by technological monitoring, creating new ways of delivering healthcare to the elderly, homebound, chronically ill and healthy alike. However, the implications of introducing technological monitoring into healthcare need to be considered in greater detail before the technologies are widely used. PHM allows for greater collection of personal health data about users, which may raise ethical concerns. As an emerging technology with the potential for widespread usage across Europe and beyond, the opportunity remains for PHM to be developed and deployed responsibly by adhering to the principles of Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI).