Gabriella Pravettoni - P5 eHealth: An Agenda for the Health Technologies of the Future

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The idea of this book emerged within the discussion of the implementation and resources of a Europe-funded project (IManage), especially regarding the utilization of an eHealth platform. eHealth is regarded as a fundamental resource for care nowadays, to the point that a growing number of scientific publications involve some form of web-based and/or immersive technologies devoted to improve patient adherence to treatment and healthy activities, patient education, and even the monitoring of mental health outcomes such as stress, emotions, as well as biases potentially affecting health-related decision-making.

Originally, the P5 approach as described here was not explicitly related to technology, but of course, eHealth constitutes an unprecedented opportunity to pursue all the five Ps within the healthcare process. In light of this concept, the present book is aimed to give examples, guidelines, suggestions, and methods to achieve the development of health technologies able not only to support health management but also to capture and exploit the personologic uniqueness of each individual.

In the contemporary scenario, where the main challenge faced by the healthcare systems worldwide is not to cure a specific disease but to support the management of incurable, chronic conditions and to guarantee long-term care to patients and survivors, such approach could be crucial to ensure that health technologies will be used and demonstrate their utility in the long term.

In this book, each one of the 5 Ps will be explained in depth by the authors with a specific expertise, with a focus on how they could be achieved through the use of specific health technologies; secondarily, other contributions will explore important aspects of eHealth design, implementation, and management.

Chapter, written by the editors of this book, will present the P5 approach and link it to eHealth, along with a short resume of health technologies themselves and considerations about their present and future.

Chapterwill present the IManage project and its technologies, in order to elaborate on them as an example of eHealth platform that has been designed and will be improved exactly on the basis of the P5 approach.

Chapterwill explore the first P, namely,prevention: the opportunities of new technologies for the forecast of future diseases and health issues will be described.

Chapterwill explore the concept ofpersonalizedmedicine and will show that digital media can be used by patients both to express themselves and to communicate with health providers and by health providers to better comprehend patients personal experience.

Chapterwill be focused on computational model and approaches to analyze and interpret data in order topredictfuture state of patients and illnesses; according to recent studies, this could be done not only with genetic and anatomical data but also with psychological and behavioral information.

Chapterwill present and comment on examples of specific technological features (coming from IManage technologies again and from other digital solutions) that could be used effectively to promote the active