International Collaboration for Smart Health

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Changing demographics, poor health behaviors, concomitant increase in non-communicative diseases combined with escalating costs are increasingly challenging healthcare delivery on a global scale. To counter these trends, healthcare needs to be transformed to be more widely available and less resource dependent. An emerging precision healthcare solution based on advances in high throughput and connective computing appear to have the potential to transform medicine and healthcare by accelerating discovery, improving patient outcomes, decreasing costs, and addressing the complexity of challenging health problems. The anticipated solutions will include novel data acquisition and processing approaches, combined with advances in computational statistical learning. These data acquisition approaches will be combined with the utilization of diverse information and data to provide automated and augmented insight, discovery, and evidence-based decision support and health services on a global scale. A successful application of technology to achieve the necessary transformation requires collaboration between computing and engineering expertise and the health domain knowledge. This workshop will introduce computing and information science researchers from the United States (US), funded by the NSF SCH program, to health researchers in Finland to foster international interdisciplinary collaborations in the area of Smart and Connected Health (SCH). In Finland, the Academy of Finland in concert with Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, has nine multidisciplinary research consortia designated to tackle complex health topics utilizing methods of personalized health (pHealth). The participants will explore opportunities and challenges to transform health research while advancing fundamental science and fostering international collaboration. Realizing the promise of disruptive transformation in health and healthcare, this workshop aims to drive innovation in computer science and engineering in the health domain through new perspectives and international collaborations. The funding is provided from Smart and Connected Health and the Office of International Science and Engineering..