eHealth initiatives, many of which are being undertaken in countries around the globe, have myriad benefits, including improvement of coordination and integration of health care delivery, empowerment of individuals and families for helping them manage their own health better and prepare health care plans, and facilitation of public health initiatives. eHealth are not simply a technology but a complex technological and relational process. In this sense, clinicians and health care providers who seek to successfully exploit eHealth should pay special attention to technology, ergonomics, human factors, and organizational changes associated with the structure of the relevant health service. This book gives an overview of the impact of eHealth systems on access to health care, quality of information on health care, cost-effectiveness of health care services and the development of eHealth equipment.

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

EHealth initiatives, many of which are being undertaken in countries around the globe, have myriad benefits, including improvement of coordination and integration of health care delivery, empowerment of individuals and families for helping them manage their own health better and prepare health care plans, and facilitation of public health initiatives. eHealth are not simply a technology but a complex technological and relational process. In this sense, clinicians and health care providers who seek to successfully exploit eHealth should pay special attention to technology, ergonomics, human factors, and organizational changes associated with the structure of the relevant health service. This book gives an overview of the impact of eHealth systems on access to health care, quality of information on health care, cost-effectiveness of health care services and the development of eHealth equipment.

The use of mobile and wireless technologies to support the achievement of health objectives (mHealth) has the potential to transform the face of health service delivery across the globe. A powerful combination of factors is driving this change. These include rapid advances in mobile technologies and applications, a rise in new opportunities for the integration of mobile health into existing eHealth services, and the continued growth in coverage of mobile cellular networks. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are now over 5 billion wireless subscribers; over 70% of them reside in low- and middle-income countries. For the first time the World Health Organization's Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) has sought to determine the status of mHealth in Member States; its 2009 global survey contained a section specifically devoted to mHealth. Completed by 114 Member States, the survey documented for analysis four aspects of mHealth: adoption of initiatives, types of initiatives, status of evaluation, and barriers to implementation. Fourteen categories of mHealth services were surveyed: health call centres, emergency toll-free telephone services, managing emergencies and disasters, mobile telemedicine, appointment reminders, community mobilization and health promotion, treatment compliance, mobile patient records, information access, patient monitoring, health surveys and data collection, surveillance, health awareness raising, and decision support systems.

This book provides a multidisciplinary overview of the design and implementation of systems for remote patient monitoring and healthcare. Readers are guided through the components of such a system and shown how they could be integrated into a coherent framework for deployment in practice. The book ends with a discussion of case studies to provide practical examples and design methods for remote healthcare systems with different needs. This book contains information that will be helpful to undergraduate and postgraduate students, academic and professional researchers, and individuals who employ computational intelligence. By presenting new models of care and support, AI in medicine is having an impact on the entire value chain of clinical practice and the patient care delivery system. This is especially evident in telemedicine breakthroughs, where applications of AI are utilized to assist, complement, or create new forms of remote healthcare. Through the use of communications technology, telemedicine enables medical professionals to examine, diagnose, and treat patients remotely. Now, the technology might also integrate online diagnostics, etc., to increase the effectiveness of the healthcare system and enhance patient outcomes. By enabling elderly people to live independently, technological advancements in fields like remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems can revolutionize senior care. Medical diagnosis will improve, and remote patient monitoring will become simpler thanks to artificial intelligence. The resistance of many patients and doctors to using the telemedicine idea for medical visits will probably be overcome by AI automation.

Remote health monitoring using wearable sensors is an important research area involving several key steps: physiological parameter sensing and data acquisition, data analysis, data security, data transmission to caregivers, and clinical intervention, all of which play a significant role to form a closed loop system. Subject-specific behavioral and clinical traits, coupled with individual physiological differences, necessitate a personalized healthcare delivery model for around-the-clock monitoring within the home environment. Cardiovascular disease monitoring is an illustrative application domain where research has been instrumental in enabling a personalized closed-loop monitoring system, which has been showcased in this book. Health Monitoring Systems: An Enabling Technology for Patient Care provides a holistic overview of state-of-the-art monitoring systems facilitated by Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The book lists out the details on biomedical signal acquisition, processing, and data security, the fundamental building blocks towards an ambulatory health monitoring infrastructure. The fundamentals have been complimented with other relevant topics including applications which provide an in-depth view on remote health monitoring systems. Key Features: Presents examples of state-of-the-art health monitoring systems using IoT infrastructure Covers the full spectrum of physiological sensing, data acquisition, processing, and data security Provides relevant example applications demonstrating the benefits of technological advancements aiding disease prognosis This book serves as a beginner’s guide for engineering students of electrical and computer science, practicing engineers, researchers, and scientists who are interested in having an overview of pervasive health monitoring systems using body-worn sensors operating outside the hospital environment. It could also be recommended as a reference for a graduate or master’s level course on biomedical instrumentation and signal processing.

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1406 “High-Performance Modelling and Simulation for Big Data Applications (cHiPSet)“ project. Long considered important pillars of the scientific method, Modelling and Simulation have evolved from traditional discrete numerical methods to complex data-intensive continuous analytical optimisations. Resolution, scale, and accuracy have become essential to predict and analyse natural and complex systems in science and engineering. When their level of abstraction raises to have a better discernment of the domain at hand, their representation gets increasingly demanding for computational and data resources. On the other hand, High Performance Computing typically entails the effective use of parallel and distributed processing units coupled with efficient storage, communication and visualisation systems to underpin complex data-intensive applications in distinct scientific and technical domains. It is then arguably required to have a seamless interaction of High Performance Computing with Modelling and Simulation in order to store, compute, analyse, and visualise large data sets in science and engineering. Funded by the European Commission, cHiPSet has provided a dynamic trans-European forum for their members and distinguished guests to openly discuss novel perspectives and topics of interests for these two communities. This cHiPSet compendium presents a set of selected case studies related to healthcare, biological data, computational advertising, multimedia, finance, bioinformatics, and telecommunications.