Ubiquitous Healthcare: A New Frontier in E-Health

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service projects that by the year 2011 the total healthcare expenditure would reach $2.8 trillion and would amount to 17% of the GDP. Several surveys in the past equivocally agree that the population of the world is aging and this is resulting in increased healthcare utilization/expenses. The current research evaluates ubiquitous healthcare as a strategy that can be deployed as a means of pushing prevention and disease management in the hands of the patients where intervention from the healthcare sector is provided as and when needed. Wireless communication technologies, biomedical sensors/monitoring technologies and ad-hoc networking are some of the primary technologies that form the foundation to promoting ubiquitous healthcare. The current research develops architecture of ubiquitous healthcare depicting enabling technologies and interaction of the patients in a ubiquitous healthcare environment. The technologies that enable various facets of ubiquitous healthcare are evaluated in terms of technical as well as non-technical issues and a classification framework is produced. The current applications of ubiquitous healthcare are evaluated and challenges opportunities and future research areas associated with realizing the vision of ubiquitous healthcare are discussed.