Design for eHealth and telehealth

The skyrocketing healthcare cost and the insufficient healthcare manpower have been an impetus for the changing paradigm in healthcare, especially for managing chronic conditions, follow-up care, general wellbeing, and rural care with more emphasis on patient-centric health management. Patient-centric management involves people taking shared responsibility for their health outcomes. The tools necessary to achieve this include an electronic health record, sensor devices for gathering physiological information relevant to the particular illness, contextual presentation of information to both patients and doctors, and optimized communication and involvement of healthcare personnel. All these components should be integrated into a system for easy use by both the patients and the healthcare providers. The Quality of Life Technology Laboratory at the University of Texas at Dallas has developed such an integrated system that can be used easily via the web. The system is called “HygeiaTel,” and it is used here as an example to describe the design of the next-generation telehealth system. This powerful telehealth system is capable of providing, anywhere and anytime, health service at a reduced cost.