Collaborative Environments for the Health Monitoring of Chronically Ill Children

Abstract

A revolution is taking place in the healthcare field with information technology (IT) playing an increasingly important role in its delivery. Healthcare providers are exploring IT opportunities in reducing the overall costs of healthcare delivery while improving the quality of its provision to citizens. Healthcare services have accumulated great benefits from the application of information technologies, telecommunications and management tools. Internet, wireless, and handheld technologies have the capability to affect healthcare by improving quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of work. Healthcare information systems include a wide range of applications ranging from diagnostic tools to health management applications and from inpatient to outpatient monitoring services. Home-care systems address patients and their families and provide the means to manage their health status related to a specific health problem. Home-care systems include a wide variety of offered services such as: (a) directory services (hospital location, doctor specialties), (b) computer patient records (CPR) along with interfaces for interoperability, (c) certified medical information provision, (d) interfacing to specialized medical monitoring devices, and (e) synchronous and asynchronous collaboration services. All these services are offered, most of the time, through secure and seamless networks.