PerHealth2018 is an IEEE PerCom workshop that focuses on pervasive information and medical-device technologies that can aid people in managing their own health. We will provide a forum where hardware, software, and middleware technologies are discussed that relate to aging in place, geriatrics, chronic disease management, health management, or that could help people with disabilities.
Healthy living and access to appropriate healthcare have become major concerns and behavioral drivers for people in today’s societies. This is also reflected in the economy, as an average middle class family in the U.S. spends on average 22% of their income on healthcare. This impact is further emphasized as population aging has become a significant issue in developed countries, heaving a negative effect on the relative supply of healthcare providers and thus further increasing cost. Information technology has the potential to help disrupt the resulting cost spiral and reduce the financial and societal burden that healthcare can pose. With today’s relative free flow of information, people have access to more relevant information and thus can afford to make better health decisions. Pervasive technologies can not only help provide, manage, and analyze passive health information but can be used to monitor health parameters in persons and thus provide more tailored information. Such monitoring could also provide value added information when visiting healthcare professionals. In the context of the workshop we use the term “pervasive health” as the superset of soft- and hardware technologies that can help people manage their health in a pervasive manner.