Directions for ICT Research in Disease Prevention

The market for ICT enabled Personal Health Systems in secondary prevention, namely chronic disease management systems, is already emerging, and from an ICT research perspective, challenges in this domain have been tackled in the last decade. This chapter instead will focus on ICT research directions for primary prevention, i.e., taking care of individuals’ health before they actually become “patients” of any chronic condition. Primary prevention proposes strong challenges, especially because a healthy person is less interested in investing time and money in solutions for improving/maintaining her health status. This chapter proposes a model in which the citizen can become a co-producer of her own health, together with the traditional Healthcare Systems and with other entities that may find interesting business opportunities to enter in this game.