Social support is the physical and emotional comfort given to someone in times of need or crises and it is especially important for maintaining good physical and mental health. Despite the contribution of intelligent technological devices, which have led to the availability of various types of social support systems, the latter are still not widely known to many. These support systems are curre...

Applications accessible through mobile devices, such as mobile phones, are playing an increasingly important part in the delivery of high quality and personalized healthcare services. In this paper, we examine current usage of mobile devices and networks by mobile healthcare applications, and present our views on how mobile devices and networks could be used for creating patient-centered health...

Healthcare applications are considered as promising fields for wireless sensor networks, where patients can be monitored using wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs). Current WMSN healthcare research trends focus on patient reliable communication, patient mobility, and energy-efficient routing, as a few examples. However, deploying new technologies in healthcare applications without consideri...

   Micro-electroactive polymers have wide applications from industry to healthcare. Artificial muscles, microvalves, microswitches, haptic sensing, blood pressure and pulse monitoring are some potential applications for micro-electroactive polymers. The most advantage of micro-electroactive polymers as sensors and actuators is bio-compatibility and low power threshold for large deformations...

With an increasingly mobile society and the worldwide deployment of mobile and wireless networks, the wireless infrastructure can support many current and emerging healthcare applications. This could fulfill the vision of “Pervasive Healthcare” or healthcare to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and the quality. In ...

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of healthcare providers towards health information technology applications in King Abdul-Aziz Medical City in terms of benefits, barriers, and motivations. The study population consists of all healthcare providers working at KAMC. A sample size of 623 was drawn from a population of 7493 healthcare providers using convenience random samplin...

In the past decade, technology growth in healthcare has exploded, and along with the tide of newly emerging technology comes the smartphone and accompanying applications. A smartphone is a cellular telephone with additional features including cameras, video playback, MP3 player, built-in applications, and Internet access for Web browsing and e-mail. Smartphone sales are predicted to reach 1.5 b...

Grid computing has attracted worldwide attention in a variety of applications ranging from physics, chemistry, environment, aerospace and healthcare. Great efforts, resources and fundings have been put into national, regional and international initiatives in grid infrastructure, grid core technologies and grid applications. The integration of Grid and Healthcare has formed an exciting and speci...

There is growing interest in devices for home healthcare applications. At world level, the life expectancy will increase from 67.2 years in 2010 to 75.4 years in 2050, and in more developed regions life expectancy will rise to 82.4 years by 2050 (UN, 2006). This has considerable consequences for healthcare budgets. The number of people with chronic illness is also increasing and due to frequent...