IEmS: A collaborative environment for patient empowerment

Abstract

Personalized medicine refers to the tailoring of treatment to the individual characteristics of a patient. Part of the personalized medicine is the patient profiling and the communicative relation between physician and patient. The ways of exchanging information, the nature of the information itself and the information assimilation capabilities of the patient can assist the physicians to have a better understanding. Taking advantage of these information sources, a smart environment could be implemented. This environment will be able to act as a decision support infrastructure to support the communication, interaction and information delivery process from the doctor to the patient. A prerequisite of personalized delivery of information and intelligent guidance of the patient into his/her treatment plans is our ability to develop an appropriate and accurate profile of the patient. In this paper we present a collaborative platform which will empower patient with knowledge about his/her health condition and at the same time it will assist the physician to have a better understanding about the patient's unique psychological profile. We also introduce the p-medicine project and its vision in the field of personalized medicine and show project's approach on patient empowerment. © 2012 IEEE.