Pervasive computing support for hospitals: An overview of the activity-based computing project

The principle of activity-based computing (ABC) project to research pervasive computing support for clinical hospital support work is discussed. The technologies have potential for supporting the mobile, collaborative, and disruptive use heterogeneous embedded devices in a hospital. An activity-based computing suggests that computational activities should be a first-class object in the computing environment along with files and applications. The platform reduces the users' overhead of starting applications, data browsing, and user interface navigation. The activity suspend-resume principle suggests that users should be able to quickly switch between activities. The ABC framework has a hybrid architecture using client-server communication for activity and state management and peer-to-peer communication for telepointers, voice link, and other collaborative widgets used in synchronous activity sharing.