Transcript PowerPoint-esitys

Technology based solutions for
productivity and efficiency of healthcare
Towards ubiquitous healthcare
Esko Alasaarela
Docent
University of Oulu
EuHPN-seminar 13-14.6.2005 in Oulu, Finland
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What is the problem to be solved?
• The worldwide cost crisis of the healthcare systems
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due to ageing of population
due to rising cost of workforce in western countries
due to rising costs of high quality treatment
due to threat of new panepidemies
due to new diseases (due to overwhelming delivery of
antibiotics etc.)
• How to maintain the quality and availability level of
healthcare services?
• Could new technological solutions offer help?
– especially the Ubiquitous computing technology?
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Ubiquitous – present everywhere
• Ubiquitous computing
≈ Pervasive computing
• Ambient intelligence
(used in EU, e-Europeprogram)
• Available everywhere,
anytime for anybody
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What is ubiquitous
healthcare?
• Ubiquitous healthcare makes healthcare available
everywhere, anytime – pervasively
• Ubiquitous healthcare integrates healthcare more
seamlessly to our everyday life, independent of
wherever we are
• In fact, healthcare will be one of the main application
areas of ubiquitous computing
• Because of the global financial crisis of healthcare,
ubiquitous healthcare will be one of the greatest
challenges of information society technology
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Issues of ubiquitous healthcare
• HIS Hospital and healhcare
information systems
• Information streams
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Individual identification
Patients’ health records
Patients’ monitoring data
Professionals’ expertise
data
– Medical database
– Administrative data
HIS
• Patient and professional
user interfaces!!!
• Pervasive networking
• Pervasive server network
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Ubiquitous healthcare
technologies
• Technologies for individuals (patients) in hospitals
and during healthcare services
– e.g. wireless hospital technologies
• Technologies for individuals outside the hospital
(eHealth)
– Personal disease management (e.g. diabetes)
– Personal wellness management (e.g. fitness)
– Independent living (e.g. elder people)
• Technologies for healthcare professionals
– Hospitals without walls
– Management of information and resources inside hospitals
– Interlinking the information world and the physical world 
problem of USER INTERFACE
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Problems to be solved
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It is big and challenging change. How can we manage it?
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Development of robust and easy user interface
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How do we motivate real patients to wear and use in the beginning
bulky and sometimes faulty prototypes? How are ethical issues
involved?
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Practical and economical issues
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How will the change be promoted in public?
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Should the change be done little-by-little or as national or European
wide projects?
– The new healthcare processes and technologies have to be developed in
real life, with real patients and real healthcare professionals and real
engineers  cross-professional cooperation in practical environment
– User interface is the crucial challenge!
– The projects need engineers, professionals, piloting environments, technical
materials and components. How are they organized and funded?
– There are only few success stories so far …
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What does it mean in money?
• The $1.5 trillion healthcare industry in the U.S. currently
spends only 5 % on information technology, and only small
part of it on wireless technologies
• A market research reveals that the overall U.S. wireless data
networking and related servicing opportunity in the healthcare
sector will grow to over $7 billion by 2010, with the potential
to be much higher given proper development
• NPfIT in UK invests about 8 billion pounds on IT of NHS
(National Health Services) by 2010
• In Finland Tekes, Sitra and Ministery of Social and Healthcare
affairs together with the companies invest altogether about
0.5 billion euros (?) in reengineering healthcare processes by
information technology by 2010
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http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c4573
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Jeff Goldsmith, the Futurologist
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MIT Wireless Ring Sensor
Measurments (wireless)
- Heart rate
- Heart rate variability
- Oxygen saturation
- Estimation of blood pressure
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Some of the benefits of Ubi-Health
• Basic and potential benefits
– Rapid response to critical medical care regardless of
geographic barriers
– Flexible and swift access to expert opinion
– Management of medical expertise also in rural areas
– Intelligent personal health monitoring system
– Swift medical care in emergencies and medical data
management in catastrophes
– Promotion of healthy life styles with continuous health
monitoring
– Synergy of information from individual sensors (better insight
into the physiological state and level of activity)
Source: Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Section on M-Health: Beyond Seamless Mobility and Global
Wireless Health-Care Connectivity. IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine. Vol 8, No. 4,
December 2004, 405-414
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Concluding
• The crisis problem is worldwide
– Europe, America, Far East etc.
• Investments in technological development
efforts are increasing but not sufficient
• More international strategic cooperation
and coordination are needed
• The future will be different!
– We are not talented enough to see the future as
it will be
– We have to be prepared to different futures
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Photo: Esko Alasaarela
Swan – the National bird of Finland
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