Keynote Talk: Understanding the Needs in a Future Digital Healthcare

While digitalization is supposed to be a must-to-follow path to a future healthcare featured with personalized, predictive, preventive, precise, participatory medicine and other ambitious goals, the process of forming a sustainable digital healthcare paradigm would not be as straightforward to understand as engineering technical systems. The complexity of a healthcare ecosystem and the paradigm change from hospital-based to municipality and home-based healthcare require system designers and decision makers take into account the needs from different parties on different levels through a holistic approach when digitalizing the existing and inventing new healthcare services.

This talk would try understanding the needs in a future digital healthcare through several socio-technical perspectives in designing and delivering care services including communication, coordination, motivation, and risk management. We will also attempt at understanding some determinants underlying the challenges facing future healthcare which could be aware of and better understood during the process of healthcare digitalization. Some suggestions in research strategy will be given to address these challenges.