A PERSONAL HEALTH SYSTEM FOR UBIQUITOUS HEALTH MONITORING AND PROMOTION

Population aging in developed countries is a well known phenomenon that causes a direct increase in health care costs. Aside from the extensive time period of treatment, the elderly are usually afflicted by comorbidities, such as nutritional and psychological problems, that can affect their recovery. Moreover many of the diseases that afflict modern society are those that could be easily prevented or at most attenuated with proper health education and support. (e.g. eating disorders, sleep disorders, self-care and tolerance stress caused by illness).In general, one of the variables that highly determine if a health education program is successful is patient compliance, which is then affected by many other factors. A way to improve ill patients’ perception of care is to use pervasive technologies linked to the usage of the widespread mobile devices such as cell phones or Smartphones. The use of a high tech device is proven by many studies to add a strong placebo effect on health care delivery and adherence to scheduled activities. Also, the look and the user conception of the mobile device, will not be seen as threatening as can be seen a medical equipment, strongly characterized by a medical image. Aside from the patients' perception, the smartphone seems to be the best equipped device to sustain an interactive health education system for various reasons (diffuse technology, access on the global tracking device system, hard drive already developed and economically attainable, potential of software development). The system in mind, properly developed, has great potential to treat many types of disorders and diseases. In order to accomplish the goals, the proposed device must not be deemed threatening, invasive or boring because it would only increase its chances of being refused. Certain characteristics that the ideal system would have are: user friendliness, adaptability, facial and voice recognition interfaces, face appearance, voice timer, tone modulatio