Welcome Note by the General Chair
|Sir Jonathan Michael
Deputy Managing Director, Healthcare
Welcome to the conference website for Electronic Healthcare for the 21st Century.
It is widely acknowledged that pressures such as treatment advances, increasing chronic disease burden of an aging population, and a falling carer-support ratio render many of the current health care provision models unsustainable. It is recognized that information and communications technology (ICT) is fundamental to enabling changes in the way services can be delivered and the outcomes that can be achieved. However, health is perhaps the last of the information intensive industries to adopt ICT on an integrated industry-wide basis.
ICT enables more care to be delivered at home, helping to contain health costs by reducing demand for more expensive hospital care. It also provides a safer and less stressful environment for many patients. Patients and Citizens are taking an increasingly active role in managing their own health and wellbeing, through seeking medical information, monitoring their physiological parameters, and participating in activity programs. These trends are creating demand for new products and services. Pervasive healthcare, an emerging research discipline of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology in health care, is a very important component in addressing these requirements.
We look forward to welcoming you to this important event.
Sir Jonathan MichaelTop