Health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care: on services and ICT architecture paradigms

Background. Progress in information and communication technologies (ICT) is providing new opportunities for pervasive health care services in aging societies. Objectives. To identify starting points of health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care. To describe typical services of and contemporary ICT architecture paradigms for pervasive health care. Methods. Summarizing outcomes of literature analyses and results from own research projects in this field. Results. Basic functions for pervasive health care with respect to home care comprise emergency detection and alarm, disease management, as well as health status feedback and advice. These functions are complemented by optional (non-health care) functions. Four major paradigms for contemporary ICT architectures are person-centered ICT architectures, home-centered ICT architectures, telehealth service-centered ICT architectures and health care institution-centered ICT architectures. Conclusions. Health-enabling technologies may lead to both new ways of living and new ways of health care. Both ways are interwoven. This has to be considered for appropriate ICT architectures of sensor-enhanced health information systems. IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association, may be an appropriate forum for interdisciplinary research exchange on health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care.