Technologies for Wellbeing and Healthy Living: Perspectives and Challenges

Abstract

It is a strange paradox that the public is talking about health technology but cares more about disease technology: people address chronic diseases, people want to change unhealthy behaviors, people aim to help carers and nurses-but people hardly ever look at those who are and want to remain healthy. This is even stranger, as times of health outnumber periods of disease in most persons` lifetimes. Somewhat surprisingly, technology available today is not yet optimally suited to help staying healthy. The authors discuss challenges with respect to the adaption of health behavior models, long-term interaction, quality of data, design of devices, primary use of data, and life-long data. And the authors suggest understanding technical systems for wellbeing as navigational systems, guiding a person through life on a healthy path.