Using collective intelligence to fine-tune public health policy.

The European Union Future Internet Assembly, the roadmap for the Web heading towards semantic interoperability and building on the UK's adoption of the Internet and social media are accelerating the development of Web 3.0. A number of health portals are opening, some with facilities for the capture of Patient Based Records. Collective Intelligence will be generated that, applied to health, has potential to support Public Health policy. By using the Internet, millions of people in the course of their daily activities contribute to uncertified data stores, some explicitly collaborating to create collective knowledge bases, some contributing implicitly through the patterns of their choices and actions. An application of soft computing, called Collective Health Intelligence, that reasons uncertified and certified data could enhance the social pool of existing health knowledge available to the public health agencies. Collective Health Intelligence could be used to complement national programmes by employing innovative sampling techniques, cost-effectively generating anonymous data trends that would quantify policy, indicate epidemiological effects and supply metrics to test policy efficacy.

"The impatient patient".

Modern Healthcare Systems that have embraced ICT and Internet technologies (referred to as Health 1.0) are evolving towards self management but from a clinical knowledge perspective. In contrast, from a user experience perspective, and using the latest web 2.0 technologies, the developing healthcare social networking communities (referred to as Health 2.0) are evolving towards becoming online medical portals. The growing Grand Challenge for healthcare is therefore: how will health care services (Health 1.0) work together with user-generated health care (Health 2.0) in a consumer market place delivering self management services for a healthier lifestyle and medical compliance. What is foreseen is that the self care information tool of the future will be a combination between the patient's observation record and the Internet, with the doctor and the patient positioned together at the intersection but not having to pay attention to the technology. This article deals with various aspects related to this Grand Challenge like the paradigm shift towards a needs-led and consumer-oriented healthcare, the role, supply and quality of information and the changing doctor-patient relationship.

An assisted-living home architecture with integrated healthcare services for elderly people.

Since the population of elderly people grows absolutely and in relation to the overall population in the world, the improvement of the quality of life of elderly people at home is of a great importance. This can be achieved through the development of generic technologies for managing their domestic ambient environment consisting of medical sensors, entertainment equipment, home automation systems and white goods, increasing their autonomy and safety. In this context, the provision intelligent interactive healthcare services will improve their daily life and allowing at the same time the continuous monitoring of their health and their effective treatment. This work is supported by the INHOME Project EU IST-045061-STP, http://www.ist-inhome.eu.

Healthcare compunetics.

Changes in life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and health seeking behaviour are having an impact on the demand for care. Such changes could occur across the whole population, or for specific groups. Changes for specific groups will be particularly affected by policy initiatives, while both these and wider changes will be affected by people's levels of engagement with their health and the health service itself. Levels of education, income and media coverage of health issues are also important. These factors could also encourage an increase in people caring for themselves and their families or community. People are now expecting a patient-centred service with safe high quality treatment, comfortable accommodation services, fast access and an integrated joined-up system. The uptake of integrated Information and Communication technologies (ICT) will be crucial. Healthcare Compunetics, the combination of computing and networking customised for medical and care, will provide the common policy and framework for combined multi-disciplinary research, development, implementation and usage.

Mobile technology for global health.

Maturing telemedicine technologies, struggling mobile networking revenues and increased personal healthcare awareness have provided the foundations for a new market niche that of '3G Medicine'. During the last 5 years, telemedicine (based on internet and web technologies) is becoming a reality both in terms of developing technologies and supportive legislation. Within Europe wireless infrastructures (3G Networking) has received a huge investment and although not well defined in how it will be achieved healthcare has been identified as a major stream of revenue with personal healthcare (e.g. EHCR on the handset) being a key issue especially for the handset manufactures. Combined with an increased awareness not only for outpatients but also for the "well-worried" (healthy and health conscious) 3G Medicine Services will play an important role in personal healthcare management. Subsequently, the development of supportive 3G Medicine products and services will also create a new niche market economy for companies, especially SME's, to develop a range of collaborative technologies.