Digital Methods and Tools to Support Healthy Ageing

While digital transformations are happening in all walks of society and business, there is real potential for improving the quality of life of the elderly using digital methods and tools. Digital health promises to deliver better healthcare quality cost-efficiently to more people, especially in the case of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes. It will achieve this by combining the benefits of telehealth, eHealth, data-driven personalised healthcare, and evidence-based care. This book presents a discussion of evolving digital technologies, such as smart phones and assisted living, and innovative digitally based services that are helping improve the quality and cost of healthcare for the elderly.

This book evolved from a recent multi-country and multi-disciplinary initiative called Digital Health for the Ageing Population. This project (2019-2021) aimed at promoting general awareness of digital health for ageing populations with collaborative research across several countries including Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Norway, The Netherlands, and USA.

With its international scope and detailed coverage of relevant digital methods and tools, this book will benefit healthcare technologists, ICT developers, managers of healthcare and mobile healthcare projects, and academic researchers working in related fields.

Pradeep Kumar Ray is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, China, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Population Health, UNSW-Australia where he co-founded the WHO Collaborating Centre for eHealth. Pradeep has been working on multi-disciplinary projects (across engineering, medicine, business and environment) on digital health (jointly with industry, governments, and global bodies like WHO, EU and IEEE) across the Asia Pacific region.

Siaw-Teng Liaw is a clinical informatician and directs the WHO Collaborating Centre on eHealth. Teng educates information, computer and health science students. His research focuses on telehealth/virtual care, digital health maturity and quality and utility of real-world data from information systems, apps and sensors. He chairs the IMIA Primary Care Informatics Working Group and RACGP Ethics Committee. He is Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics and American College of Medical Informatics.

J. Artur Serrano is a professor in Care Technology and Well-being at the Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science (INB), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, NTNU/Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Scientific coordinator of several EU projects, such as SENSE-GARDEN (www.sense-garden.eu) and VictoryaHome (www.victoryahome.eu). Prof. Serrano was co-editor of the Journal for Telemedicine and Telecare and guest editor of the International Journal of E-Health and Medical Communications. He is interested in e-Health, dementia care, immersive technologies, and social robotics.