Plenary Lecture

Internet and Network-based Healthcare: Performance Analysis and Improvements

Dr. Seyed A Shahrestani
School of Computing & Mathematics
University of Western Sydney
AUSTRALIA
E-mail: S.Shahrestani@uws.edu.au

Abstract: eHealth covers the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related interaction between healthcare professionals and the system clients. It can also include telemedicine services, systems for monitoring and assisting patients and health information networks. Health ICT industry can become the third largest industry in the health sector with a global turnover of €50-60 billion. In particular, telemedicine and homecare is the sector with the greatest prospective for clinical and financial impact. To see why, it can for instance be noted that chronic diseases are responsible for 60% of all deaths. In Europe, over 70% of healthcare costs are spent on chronic diseases. As the risk of chronic disease increases with age, problems will be exacerbated due to world aging population. A clearly advantageous method of dealing with chronic diseases relies on network-based care. It can be based on collecting metrics from biomedical devices used by patients in their homes or other settings and using the communication networks to transmit them to a clinical facility. There are many other promising techniques that can benefit from network-based healthcare. Although the advantages of these techniques are rather obvious, they have not yet enjoyed widespread acceptance and deployments. Many studies have been carried out to identify the reasons for that. Several of these reasons are at least implicitly related to the underlying communication networks and the Internet characteristics. The heterogeneous nature of the Internet, along with its intentional lack of central control and loose hierarchy pose many challenges for its management. In this work, a framework for analysis and management of such complex systems is presented. In particular, the advantages of utilizing these approaches to improve the overall performance of Internet and network-based healthcare systems for a wide range of operating conditions are discussed.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dr Seyed Shahrestani has received his PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering from University of Sydney. He is currently a Senior Lecturer with the School of Computing and Math, University of Western Sydney. He has established partnerships and collaborations with several researchers and groups in different universities and industries. His main teaching and research interests are in the areas of telecommunication and computer networking, chaos analysis and management, nonlinear control theory, complex system analysis and control, artificial intelligence, network management, cooperative management and health ICT. He has numerous publications in these areas and has served on the editorial board and technical committee for several international conferences and reputable journals. He has also delivered keynote speeches at many international conferences and industry colloquiums.