Personal Healthcare - the Future of Chronic Disease Management

"Personal Healthcare" refers to the prevention and management of diseases outside the institutional points of care. The paradigm shift is to apply healthcare whereever a person may be, at his home or on the move. This new paradigm will allow a much more frequent interaction of a professional or the patient himself with his health status. Even for ill people the typical frequency of doctor visits is several months, whereas with a personalized system care can be applied on a daily or even continuous basis. Such an approach is not only suited for remotely managing chronically ill patients but also for the very personalized prevention of such diseases. The current demographic development will accelerate the paradigm shift towards personal healthcare, because the growth of the percentage of elderly people among the population will lead to an increased prevalence of chronic diseases, which could not be handled with the traditional health system (in terms of personnel but also cost). The talk will give an overview of the current Philips activities in the field of personal healthcare and current research activities like the MyHeart and HeartCycle projects. MyHeart is the largest project of the European Union in the field of personal healthcare aiming to develop intelligent systems for the prevention and monitoring of cardiovascular diseases. The project develops smart electronic and textile systems and appropriate services that empower the users to take control of their own health status. HeartCycle is a recently started European research project in the 7th framework of the European Commission and focused on closing the loop from remote monitoring to treatment.