Pervasive ICT and Healthcare: Future Technologies and Opportunities

Project Summary

Changes in the healthcare sector in the UK and elsewhere create both challenges and opportunities for BT. Challenges in a changing and competitive market; opportunities from new demand for healthcare services and supporting technology. Demographic changes in the UK and elsewhere mean that the sectors of the population where spending on healthcare is concentrated are expanding, and we can expect increasing focus on healthcare. BT is already a significant supplier of ICT services to the NHS; research in the Pervasive ICT Centre suggests other health-sector scenarios where novel pervasive technology can play a part in aligning BT in the ICT space. This activity investigates applications in distributed information provision, decentralised control and other technologies to the healthcare sector, and studies possible deployment scenarios for technology drawing upon the expertise of the Future Technologies Group within the PICT Centre, and linking to work in the health sector across the Centre.