Accessible telehealth — Leveraging consumer-level technologies and social networking functionalities for senior care

The increasing cost of healthcare represents a serious challenge to most developed countries. Telehealth has been widely promoted as a technology to make healthcare more effective and affordable. However, current telehealth systems suffer from vendor lock-in and high cost, and are designed for managing chronic diseases, rather than preventing them. In this paper we evaluate technologies for supporting senior health consumers. Based on this we propose a framework for a novel telehealth system overcoming many of the shortcomings of existing technologies. The new system is web-based, has a Facebook-like plug-in architecture for adding new health applications, and incorporates social networking functionalities. We discuss the challenges in implementing the system, and summarize a user study evaluating the system. Our results demonstrate that health consumers have a positive view of this new telehealth technology, and that it can positively change the attitude of users towards their health.