Towards delivering disease support processes for patient empowerment using mobile virtual communities

Abstract

In existing healthcare systems, the focus is on clinical processes to assess the health condition of patients, making clinical decisions and applying therapeutic procedures all under control of health professionals. However, patients with chronic diseases usually face many disease related problems that are not immediately under control or supervision of a health professional. Taking patients with chronic cardiovascular diseases as an example, these patients are recommended to make a number of lifestyle changes: increase physical activity, change diet habits, quit smoking and adhere to a medication intake regime. In this paper we propose the use of Mobile Virtual Communities to enhance the empowerment of patients by providing the ICT mediated social support functionalities that assist patients to realize the lifestyle changes needed. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.