Development of Personal Wellness Information Model for Pervasive Healthcare

• Main Authors: Antto Seppälä, Pirkko Nykänen, Pekka Ruotsalainen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2012-01-01
• Series: Journal of Computer Networks and Communications
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/596749

Pervasive healthcare and citizen-centered care paradigm are moving the healthcare outside the hospital environment. Healthcare delivery is becoming more personalized and decentralized, focusing on prevention and proactive services with a complete view of health and wellbeing. The concept of wellness has been used to describe this holistic view of health, which focuses on physical, social, and mental well-being. Pervasive computing makes it possible to collect information and offer services anytime and anywhere. To support pervasive healthcare with wellness approaches, semantic interoperability is needed between all actors and information sources in the ecosystem. This study focuses on the domain of personal wellness and analyzes related concepts, relationships, and environments. As a result of this study, we have created an information model that focuses on the citizens’ perspectives and conceptualizations of personal wellness. The model has been created based on empirical research conducted with focus groups.