Technology-enabled chronic disease management in under-resourced environments

With the large international effort directed against malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and water-borne illnesses comes the inevitable emergence of chronic diseases as a major worldwide health threat. Management of chronic illness requires a partnership of the person with the illness and the healthcare establishment in an ecosystem of information flow. Remote biosensors in a ubiquitous computing environment provided by mobile phones allows the constant participation of the person with the illness in his or her own health care by providing communications and disease indicators simultaneously and at low cost. The addition of a geographic information system allows the aggregation of individual data into a picture of the epidemiology of the illness and its control, thus facilitating regional and national health planning at low cost without compromising individual privacy. The dissemination of such a system is a complex political and social task with great potential benefit for improving individual and societal quality of life while reducing the cost burden of chronic disease.