Envisioning uHealth : An Ontological Framework

Ubiquitous health care (uHealth) is becoming feasible today, more so than ever before, due to rapid advances in information technology. We can glimpse its possibilities in the care of the wounded in war and the diagnosis and treatment of diseases from a distance. However, the visions of uHealth are many and partial, ill-defined and unclear. We present a set of four ontologies to envision uHealth systemically. The ontologies deconstruct uHealth into spatial, temporal, and semiotic ubiquity. Each aspect of ubiquity is further deconstructed into three components. These ontologies can be used to construct a comprehensive natural-language narrative of uHealth. They can also be used to (a) map the states-of-the-potential, -art, and -practice of uHealth, and (b) systematically design the trajectory for the transformation to uHealth