Pervasive healthcare is the conceptual system of providing healthcare to anyone, at anytime, and anywhere by removing restraints of time and location while increasing both the coverage and the quality of healthcare. Pervasive Healthcare Computing is at the forefront of this research, and presents the ways in which mobile and wireless technologies can be used to implement the vision of pervasive healthcare.This vision includes prevention, healthcare maintenance and checkups; short-term monitoring (home healthcare), long-term monitoring (nursing home), and personalized healthcare monitoring; and incidence detection and management, emergency intervention, transportation and treatment. The pervasive healthcare applications include intelligent emergency management system, pervasive healthcare data access, and ubiquitous mobile telemedicine.Pervasive Healthcare Computing includes the treatment of several new wireless technologies and the ways in which they will implement the vision of pervasive healthcare.

Introduces healthcare IT challenges and requirements (patient-oriented, system-oriented, and healthcare professionals-oriented)

Chapter 1: Healthcare Systems: Challenges and Solutions. Healthcare System in US. Costs and Complexity of Payments. Limited Number of Healthcare Professionals. Technological & Other Inefficiencies in Healthcare. Patients-related Challenges. Cost of Medications & Poor Adherence. Medical Errors & Quality of Care. Healthcare Billing and Fraud. Improvements with Technologies in Healthcare. Rest of the Book.- Chapter 2: E-Health and IT in Healthcare. E-health. EMR and EHR. Issues in EMR/EHR. Telemedicine. Future of IT in Healthcare.- Chapter 3: Pervasive Computing and Healthcare. Pervasive Computing. Pervasive Healthcare. Pervasive Healthcare Requirements. Open Issues and Challenges.- Chapter 4: Wireless and Mobile Technologies. Introduction. The Commercial Cellular/3G Networks. Wireless LANs. Satellites. Sensors. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Bluetooth. ZigBee. Fixed Wireless and WiMax. The Overall Picture. Conclusions and the Future.- Chapter 5: Wireless Health Monitoring: Requirements and Examples. Introduction. The Monitoring Environments. General Monitoring Requirements. Vital Signs and Medical Parameters. Specific Vital Signs. An Example of Monitoring Scenario and Requirements. Sleep Apnea Monitoring. Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring. Wireless Stress Monitoring. Stray Prevention Monitoring. Some More Types of Monitoring. Conclusions and Future.- Chapter 6: Wireless Health Monitoring: State of the Art and Implementations. State-of-the Art in Wireless Health Monitoring. Evolution of WHM. A High-level Framework for WHM. An Implementation. The Future of WHM.- Chapter 7: Medical Decision Making. Introduction. Requirements and Functions of Healthcare Professionals. The Role of Healthcare Professionals¿ Devices. An Example of Medical Decision Making. What to Do When Something Goes Wrong. Cognitive Load. Alert Monitoring andManagement System. The Future of Medical Decision Making in WHM.- Chapter 8: Health Monitoring using Infrastructure-oriented Wireless Networks. Introduction. Networking Requirements of Wireless Health Monitoring. Advantages of Cellular/3G for Health Monitoring. Limitations of Cellular/3G for WHM. Advantages of W-LANs in Health Monitoring. Limitations of W-LANs for WHM. Comparison of Cellular/3G and Wireless LANs. Reliability for Wireless Health Monitoring. Other Networking Considerations. Future.- Chapter 9: Ad Hoc Networks for Health Monitoring. Introduction. Challenges for Wireless Health Monitoring. Existing Ad Hoc Networks. Monitoring Protocols. Routing in Ad Hoc Networks. Reliability of Ad Hoc Network Monitoring. Future.- Chapter 10: Using Incentives in Wireless Health Monitoring. Introduction. Overcoming the Non-cooperation of Routers. Incentives for Co-operation of Devices. Steps in Obtaining Co-operation. Protocols and Operations. The Decision Making Protocols. Strategies for Nodes. Challenges in the Implementation of Incentives. Conclusions and Future Research.- Chapter 11: Context-awareness in Healthcare. Introduction. Context and Context Awareness. Context in Healthcare. Context in Health Monitoring. Integration of Context Information and Details. From Context-awareness to Health-Awareness. Summary and Future.- Chapter 12: Monitoring of Mental Health, Medication and Disability. Introduction. Challenges in Mental Health Monitoring. Examples of MHM. Monitoring of Medication Compliance and Addiction. Disability Monitoring and Verification. Conclusions and Future.