Healthcare Informatics for Mental Health Recent Advances and the Outlook for the Future

Information & communications Technology (ICT) have been increasingly important players in the healthcare industry. Use of ICT in healthcare started with monitoring devices such as heart rate sensors and alarms. Other computing and communication devices include pagers, networked monitoring stations, remote operation equipment and electronic patient records. An important theme, especially with relevance to individual monitoring, has been the use of sensors [18]. Body Sensor Networks {BSN} have been developed over the last decade as part of a large number of projects to monitor the health of individuals and their surrounding environment (e.g., by monitoring their CO2 level [13]).