A Brief Overview of Enabling Technologies for Digital Medicine and Smart Healthcare

Abstract

Recognizing the ubiquitous dimension of digital and information and communication technologies (ICT) today, healthcare systems accept the advances and possibilities they offer. Two emerging concepts are increasingly gaining the attention of both researchers and entrepreneurs, as well as a wider circle of potential users - these being digital medicine and smart healthcare. Aimed at bridging the gap between traditional healthcare practices and a permanent high increase in population, these two concepts make up for the shortcomings of medical services that are not approachable or affordable to everyone in the changing circumstances. Both are heavily reliant on novel hardware and software technologies that empower patients and healthcare institutions, as well as on wearable, implantable and ingestible medical devices (WIIMD) and digital clinical assets that use internet of things (IoT) network to communicate signals of the patients' physiological traits. This paper overviews in short the current state in the field.