Quality Issues in Personalized E-Health, Mobile Health and E-Health Grids

Abstract

The electronic healthcare in the modern society has the possibility of converting the practice of delivery of health care. Currently, chaos of information is characterizing the public health care, which leads to inferior decision-making, increasing expenses and even loss of lives. Technological progress in the sensors, integrated circuits, and the wireless communications have allowed designing low cost, microscopic, light, and smart sensors. These smart sensors are able to feel, transport one or more vital signals, and they can be incorporated in wireless personal or body networks for remote health monitoring. Sensor networks promise to drive innovation in health care allowing cheap, continuous, mobile and personalized health management of electronic health records with the Internet. The e-health applications imply an exciting set of requirements for Grid middleware and provide a rigorous testing ground for Grid. In the chapter, the authors present an overview of the current technological achievements in the electronic healthcare world combined with an outline of the quality dimensions in healthcare.