A human-centered, health data-driven ecosystem

New forms of digital care are introducing new methods of communication, care delivery, data sharing, and access to health information. The internet of things, in which sensors continuously transmit data on all types of processes, hold great promise for the care industry. Medical sensors could for instance allow clinicians to remotely monitor their patients and to take immediate actions when required. Furthermore, healthy people can be monitored as well, so that potential health issues can be either prevented or detected much earlier on. While there is clear agreement on the potential of the so-called internet of medical things, the scattering of data among the different stakeholders in care remains a critical challenge to overcome in order for this new technology to prove its added value. A human-centered, health-data-driven ecosystem in order to tackle these problems is given. The model consists out of four data quadrants: administrative and financial, logistics and facility, medical, and paramedical generating data based on four different questions: ‘who am I?’, ‘where am I?’, ‘Am I healthy?’, and ‘how do I recover?’. It frames how data from all these different sources needs to be integrated by technology surrounding the central client in different environments. The connection and integration of this generated data can come from different sources like devices, platforms, humans, etc. Three possible flows have been described on how this integration and connection can be achieved based on edge and fog computing, cloud computing and centralized computing.