Connected and personalised healthcare

Last week Sanna and Laura had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Roma Maguire, professor of cancer care and head of eHealth research at the University of Surrey. Roma spoke about the need for personalised care to be more holistic instead of focussing solely on biomedical outcomes. Connected health is an ecosystem of care with the right information offered to people at the right time. Central to this ecosystem is ICT which allows for information to flow seamlessly through health and social care, offering a much more robust service. Through this shifting of responsibilities, Roma envisions a future where hospital care is the domain for the seriously ill and an emphasis is placed on communities to share the extra workload. Roma works at the 5G Innovation Centre in Surrey which focusses on mobile technologies and aims to offer a dense communication network to allow even the most remote areas to be connected.