Towards a cost-effective homecare for a public health management system in Brazil

During the last decade, several ICT systems have been proposed to fulfill the needs of managing individuals´ physical activities at home. Unfortunately, most of the developed products have been so far expensive and could not be afforded by the large majority of the population, especially in underdeveloped countries. Therefore, developing a low-cost system accessible to large portion of population in these countries or even in developed ones (Classes D and E) is still necessary. This paper presents a prototype called Diga-Saúde which proposes to develop a low-cost system using mobile phones and the Brazilian set-top box (stb) receptor for digital TV to provide home care services. Diga-Saúde is part of a larger project called LARIISA, a governance supporting framework for public health systems centered on the family.