Minimally Invasive Sensing

The key causes of mortality today include cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, cancer and diabetes. Figure 1, from the World Health Organisation’s Global Burden of Disease Report (World Health Organisation [WHO], 2006), illustrates the proportion of deaths due to the major causes. When these statistics are taken together with the age at death data as shown in Figure 2 (WHO, 2006) it can be seen that in the higher income countries, the burden of caring for the ageing population with chronic conditions will dominate healthcare needs and budgets. In the lower income countries there are still significant problems with childhood illness and infectious diseases and the challenge here is to protect the health of their younger populations.