Technology-Based Innovations to Foster Personalized Healthy Lifestyles and Well-Being: A Targeted Review

Abstract

BackgroundNew community-based arrangements and novel technologies can empower individuals to be active participants in their health maintenance, enabling people to control and self-regulate their health and wellness and make better health- and lifestyle-related decisions. Mobile sensing technology and health systems responsive to individual profiles combined with cloud computing can expand innovation for new types of interoperable services that are consumer-oriented and community-based. This could fuel a paradigm shift in the way health care can be, or should be, provided and received, while lessening the burden on exhausted health and social care systems.ObjectiveOur goal is to identify and discuss the main scientific and engineering challenges that need to be successfully addressed in delivering state-of-the-art, ubiquitous eHealth and mHealth services, including citizen-centered wellness management services, and reposition their role and potential within a broader context of diverse sociotechnical drivers, agents, and stakeholders.MethodsWe review the state-of-the-art relevant to the development and implementation of eHealth and mHealth services in critical domains. We identify and discuss scientific, engineering, and implementation-related challenges that need to be overcome to move research, development, and the market forward.ResultsSeveral important advances have been identified in the fields of systems for personalized health monitoring, such as smartphone platforms and intelligent ubiquitous services. Sensors embedded in smartphones and clothes are making the unobtrusive recognition of physical activity, behavior, and lifestyle possible, and thus the deployment of platforms for health assistance and citizen empowerment. Similarly, significant advances are observed in the domain of infrastructure supporting services. Still, many technical problems remain to be solved, combined with no less challenging issues related to security, privacy, trust, and organizational dynamics.ConclusionsDelivering innovative ubiquitous eHealth and mHealth services, including citizen-centered wellness and lifestyle management services, goes well beyond the development of technical solutions. For the large-scale information and communication technology-supported adoption of healthier lifestyles to take place, crucial innovations are needed in the process of making and deploying usable empowering end-user services that are trusted and user-acceptable. Such innovations require multidomain, multilevel, transdisciplinary work, grounded in theory but driven by citizens’ and health care professionals’ needs, expectations, and capabilities and matched by business ability to bring innovation to the market.

Medical and Para-Medical Personnel’ Perspectives on Home Health Care Technology

“…The matter of costs-benefits seems to cause this failure: technologies in home care setting is still expensive and no active policies help the sustainability of expenditure. The challenge in this specific case is to act for changing political, organizational and operational levels of society and creating prerequisites and conditions favorable to the technology uptake [19], since this is not to be considered as a catalyst for innovation [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Developments in Privacy and Data Ownership in Mobile Health Technologies, 2016-2019

“…Many authors discuss the vulnerabilities of data when being stored or during transmission to third parties [28,74,75]. There is still some debate in the literature about the security risks and benefits of the cloud; while some authors fear that cloud infrastructure is more susceptible to privacy and security attacks [76], others postulate that cloud service providers may address data privacy and security more effectively due to economies of scale and scope, which enable them to maintain more sophisticated defenses against cyber-attacks [77].…”

Extending the framework for mobile health information systems Research: A content analysis

“…An increasing number of apps, especially among the most used, are being linked to social media [31]. Social media allows people to be active participants in their health maintenance: virtually connected communities are enabling people to become more educated, supported, and more knowledgably to control and self-regulate their wellness in health-and lifestyle-related decision making [72]. Emerging technologies, responsive to individual profiles combined with Internet-based analytics, realise opportunities for new types of consumer-oriented innovations and enable new forms of community-based provision.…”

“…Emerging technologies, responsive to individual profiles combined with Internet-based analytics, realise opportunities for new types of consumer-oriented innovations and enable new forms of community-based provision. A recent count found over 165,000 mobile healthcare apps, but cautioned on the lack of evidence for the safety and efficacy of many, as well as the nonadoption and the confusion entailed by the sheer amount of apps available [72]. Many healthcare providers are now "prescribing" apps, implying a need for objective quality vetting, regulation and perhaps certification, along with future integration into electronic health records and monitoring systems, all currently underresearched areas.…”