Computers and e-Health: Roles and new applications

Recent advances in the fields of data computing and communication systems lead to new trends in utilizing technologies in daily life applications. In this context, e-Health, which is an emerging field that tends to utilize the evolving technologies in health and medical applications, comes to provide effective solutions for healthcare. This paper has the objective of promoting the current and future roles of computers in supporting e-Health. This is done by examining the current behavior of computer users toward their health and then suggesting new solutions accordingly. A survey targeted university students has been conducted to analyze how they take care of their health and whether computers and Internet can help. The collected responses show that those students have a little amount of health-related information. Also, they do not pay much attention for the most primitive healthy tips such as sporting or eating healthy food. In addition, it is found that despite the long daily usage of computers and Internet, students do not exploit these technologies to promote their life style to be healthier. The survey results represent the main motivation for PHA (Personal Health Assistant) project which is also introduced in this paper. PHA simulates an advanced healthcare center that provides services like gym, nutrition room, diet organizer and tracker, body indicators measurements such as heart rate and blood pressure, etc. This is done to allow busy people to get fast and trusted healthcare at anytime, anywhere basis using their personal digital devices.