Emerging information technologies for enhanced healthcare

The appropriate collection and consumption of electronic health information about an individual patient or population is the bedrock of modern healthcare, where electronic medical records (EMR) serve as the main carrier. This paper first introduces the main goal of this special issue and gives a brief guideline. Then, the present situation of the adoption of EMRs is reviewed. After that, the emerging information technologies are presented which have a great impact on the healthcare provision. These include health sensing for medical data collection, medical data analysis and utilization for accurate detection and prediction. Next, cloud computing is discussed, as it may provide scalable and cost-effective delivery of healthcare services. Accordingly, the current state of academic research is documented on emerging information technologies for new paradigms of healthcare service. At last, conclusions are made. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.