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.
Reviews
From the reviews:
“The book presents the impact of ICT globally and discusses the potential sustainability of such systems. The intended audience is academics, healthcare practitioners, and graduate students interested in technologies and their application to healthcare. … no comparable book on the market that presents this difficult material in such a user-friendly way. … There is also a good discussion of the electronic health record and its relationship to meaningful use as well as its return on investment that is not found in many e-health books.” (Carole Ann Kenner, Doody’s Review Service, April, 2012)
Editors and Affiliations
RMIT University, School of Business Information Technolog, Melbourne VIC, Australia
Nilmini Wickramasinghe
Coventry University, Health Design and Technology Institute (, COVENTRY West Midlands, United Kingdom
Rajeev Bali
Dept. Management, Turku School of Economics & Business Administration, Turku, Finland
Reima Suomi
Lehrst. Wirtschaftsinformatik II (510 O), Universität Hohenheim Fak. Wirtschafts-/Sozialwissenschaften, Stuttgart, Germany
Stefan Kirn
About the editors
Nilmini Wickramasinghe, who currently holds the Epworth Chair Health Information Management was appointed in Dec 2009 as a Professor to RMIT University’s School of Business IT and Logistics after being a professor in the US for 15 years. She researches and teaches in several areas within information systems including knowledge management, e-commerce and m-commerce, and organizational impacts of technology with particular focus on the applications of these areas to healthcare and thereby effecting superior healthcare delivery. Professor Wickramasinghe is well published with more than 200 referred scholarly articles, several books and an encyclopedia. She has collaborated with many large organizations such as NASA and GE as well as leading healthcare organizations such as the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Kaiser and NorthWestern Memorial Hospital. In addition, she regularly presents her work throughout North America, as well as in Europe and Australia. Professor Wickramasinghe is the editor-in-chief of two scholarly journals: International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations (IJNVO - www.inderscience.com/ijnvo ) and International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology (IJBET- www.inderscience.com/ijbet) and the Springer Series editor for Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Critical Issues for the Development of Sustainable E-health Solutions
Editors: Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Rajeev Bali, Reima Suomi, Stefan Kirn
