This book presents a comprehensive state-of the-art approach to digital health technologies and practices within the broad confines of healthcare practices. It provides a canvas to discuss emerging digital health solutions, propelled by the ubiquitous availability of miniaturized, personalized devices and affordable, easy to use wearable sensors, and innovative technologies like 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality and driverless robots and vehicles including drones. One of the most significant promises the digital health solutions hold is to keep us healthier for longer, even with limited resources, while truly scaling the delivery of healthcare.
Digital Health: Scaling Healthcare to the World addresses the emerging trends and enabling technologies contributing to technological advances in healthcare practice in the 21st Century. These areas include generic topics such as mobile health and telemedicine, as well as specific concepts such as social media for health, wearables and quantified-self trends. Also covered are the psychological models leveraged in design of solutions to persuade us to follow some recommended actions, then the design and educational facets of the proposed innovations, as well as ethics, privacy, security, and liability aspects influencing its acceptance. Furthermore, sections on economic aspects of the proposed innovations are included, analyzing the potential business models and entrepreneurship opportunities in the domain.
Homero Rivas, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Director of Innovative Surgery at Stanford University. He has been involved in Digital Health for many years and has founded and advised many Digital Health startups. He has conducted several research projects using wearable devices to improve operating room safety as well as medical simulation and education, augmented and virtual reality, and telemedicine with drones among others. He is strong proponent of novel technologies in healthcare such as 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence engines, etc. He is a co-director of Stanford’s massive “open online” course on mHealth. He is a founding member and Vice-President of the Wearable Technology in Healthcare Society (WATCH). He is a digestive surgeon and he is a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Rivas has pioneered and led numerous state-of-the art innovative techniques of minimal access surgery including scarless surgery, natural orifice surgery, robotic surgery, and more. He has been involved in minimal access surgery both in the U.S. and internationally, in nearly all continents, as a surgeon-in-training, a practicing surgeon, and also as teacher of other surgeons. He holds an MBA from the Cox School of Business at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.
Prof Katarzyna Wac is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the leader of the Quality of Life technologies lab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as well as she is affiliated with Stanford University since 2013. Prof. Wac researchers how mobile and emerging sensor-based technologies can be leveraged for an assessment of the individual’s behavior and Quality of Life, as they unfold naturally over time and in context. She draws on new emerging models from Computer Science incorporating examination of daily life as an “organ” – much like a cardiologist examines hea
rt. She contributes to the ITU European Regional Initiative for mHealth. Prof. Wac is also a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE.
