Opportunities of technology to promote health and well-being

Abstract

Healthcare and technology always have had a complicated relationship: on the one hand, technology has the possibility to make healthcare more effective and effi cient. For example, many early technologies, such as the microscope, have been used to In this chapter, we will show why and how technology, in particular, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), is a very appropriate way to promote health and well-being. This is further explained by briefl y going into the evolution of technologies within the domain of eHealth. We exemplify the opportunities of technology by going more into depth with four examples: cognitive computing, embodied conversational agents, virtual and augmented reality, and wearable technology for self-tracking. You will see that many technologies are ‘smart’ and use a form of artifi cial intelligence (AI). We will introduce some building blocks for these smart technologies: machine learning, natural language processing, image recognition and neural networks. Lastly, we will describe different software development models to give insight into the process that leads to these kinds of technologies. After completing this chapter, you will be able to: • explain the advantages of technology for health and knows what possibilities of technology induce these advantages.