Pervasive healthcare is an emerging research discipline, focusing on the development and application of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology for healthcare and wellness. Pervasive healthcare seeks to respond to a variety of pressures on healthcare systems, including the increased incidence of life-style related and chronic diseases, emerging consumerism in healthcare, need for empowering patients and relatives for self-care and management of their health, and need to provide seamless access for healthcare services, independent of time and place. Pervasive healthcare may be defined from two perspectives. First, it is the development and application of pervasive computing (or ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence) technologies for healthcare, health and wellness management. Second, it seeks to make healthcare available to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and quality of healthcare. This book proposes to define the emerging area of pervasive health and introduce key management principles, most especially knowledge management, its tools, techniques and technologies. In addition, the book takes a socio-technical, patient-centric approach which serves to emphasize the importance of a key triumvirate in healthcare management namely, the focus on people, process and technology. Last but not least the book discusses in detail a specific example of pervasive health, namely the potential use of a wireless technology solution in the monitoring of diabetic patients.

Technology is changing the practice of healthcare by the ways medical information is stored, shared, and accessed. With mobile innovations, new strategies are unfolding to further advance processes and procedures in medical settings. Next-Generation Mobile and Pervasive Healthcare Solutions is an advanced reference source for the latest research on emerging progress and applications within mobile health initiatives and health informatics. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as electronic health records (EHR), clinical decision support systems, and medical ontologies, this publication is ideally designed for professionals and researchers seeking scholarly material on the increased use of mobile health applications.

A guide to intelligent decision and pervasive computing paradigms for healthcare analytics systems with a focus on the use of bio-sensors Intelligent Pervasive Computing Systems for Smarter Healthcare describes the innovations in healthcare made possible by computing through bio-sensors. The pervasive computing paradigm offers tremendous advantages in diversified areas of healthcare research and technology. The authors—noted experts in the field—provide the state-of-the-art intelligence paradigm that enables optimization of medical assessment for a healthy, authentic, safer, and more productive environment. Today’s computers are integrated through bio-sensors and generate a huge amount of information that can enhance our ability to process enormous bio-informatics data that can be transformed into meaningful medical knowledge and help with diagnosis, monitoring and tracking health issues, clinical decision making, early detection of infectious disease prevention, and rapid analysis of health hazards. The text examines a wealth of topics such as the design and development of pervasive healthcare technologies, data modeling and information management, wearable biosensors and their systems, and more. This important resource: Explores the recent trends and developments in computing through bio-sensors and its technological applications Contains a review of biosensors and sensor systems and networks for mobile health monitoring Offers an opportunity for readers to examine the concepts and future outlook of intelligence on healthcare systems incorporating biosensor applications Includes information on privacy and security issues on wireless body area network for remote healthcare monitoring Written for scientists and application developers and professionals in related fields, Intelligent Pervasive Computing Systems for Smarter Healthcare is a guide to the most recent developments in intelligent computer systems that are applicable to the healthcare industry.

Providing a comprehensive introduction into an overview of the field of pervasive healthcare applications, this volume incorporates a variety of timely topics ranging from medical sensors and hardware infrastructures, to software platforms and applications and addresses issues of user experience and technology acceptance. The recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies have laid the groundwork for new patient-centred healthcare solutions. While the majority of computer-supported healthcare tools designed in the last decades focused mainly on supporting care-givers and medical personnel, this trend changed with the introduction of pervasive healthcare technologies, which provide supportive and adaptive services for a broad variety and diverse set of end users. With contributions from key researchers the book integrates the various aspects of pervasive healthcare systems including application design, hardware development, system implementation, hardware and software infrastructures as well as end-user aspects providing an excellent overview of this important and evolving field.

Effective healthcare delivery is a vital concern for citizens and communities across the globe. The numerous facets of this industry require constant re-evaluation and optimization of management techniques. The Handbook of Research on Healthcare Administration and Management is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on emerging strategies and methods for delivering optimal healthcare opportunities and solutions. Highlighting issues relating to decision making, process optimization, and technological applications, this book is ideally designed for policy makers, administrators, students, professionals, and researchers interested in achieving superior healthcare solutions.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 4th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K, held in Barcelona, Spain, in October 2012. The 29 best papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 347 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on knowledge discovery and information retrieval; knowledge engineering and ontology development; knowledge management and information sharing.

This volume details the latest state-of-the-art research on computational intelligence paradigms in healthcare in the intelligent agent environment. The book presents seven chapters selected from the rapidly growing application areas of computational intelligence to healthcare systems. These include intelligent synthetic characters, man-machine interface, menu generators, analysis of user acceptance, pictures archiving and communication systems.

The implementation of cloud technologies in healthcare is paving the way to more effective patient care and management for medical professionals around the world. As more facilities start to integrate cloud computing into their healthcare systems, it is imperative to examine the emergent trends and innovations in the field. Cloud Computing Systems and Applications in Healthcare features innovative research on the impact that cloud technology has on patient care, disease management, and the efficiency of various medical systems. Highlighting the challenges and difficulties in implementing cloud technology into the healthcare field, this publication is a critical reference source for academicians, technology designers, engineers, professionals, analysts, and graduate students.

Healthcare is noted for using leading-edge technologies and embracing new scientific discoveries to enable better cures for diseases and better means to enable early detection of most life-threatening diseases. However, the healthcare industry globally, and in the US specifically, has been extremely slow to adopt technologies that focus on better practice management and administrative needs. Presently, healthcare is grappling with many challenges both nationally and globally, including escalating costs, a move to a preventative care environment, and a technologically savvy patient with high expectations. The Handbook of Research on Optimizing Healthcare Management Techniques is a pivotal reference source that provides an extensive and rich compilation of various ICT initiatives and examines the role that ICT plays and will play in the future of healthcare delivery. It represents ways in which healthcare delivery can be made superior and the healthcare industry can begin to address the major challenges it faces in the 21st century so that ultimately the most important person in the web of healthcare players, the patient, can be confident about receiving high-quality, cost-effective healthcare. While highlighting topics such as e-health, medical informatics, and patient value, this publication explores the role of supportive technologies as well as the methods of focused, patient-centric outcomes. This book is ideally designed for doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, medical staff, hospital directors, medical boards, IT consultants, health practitioners, academicians, researchers, and students.

This book explores the increasing convergence of Social Media and Semantic Web technologies. It offers up-to-date contributions that illustrate various approaches to this young and emerging technology area.