Course Overview

The current healthcare system faces numerous challenges such as large cost, lack of preventive care, massive increases in chronic disease conditions and age-related illnesses, widespread obesity, poor adherence to medical regimens, and shortage of healthcare professionals. The concept of pervasive healthcare promises to provide care to anyone, at anytime, and anywhere, while increasing the coverage, quality, and efficiency of healthcare. This course studies how mobile and wireless technologies can be used to implement this vision of future healthcare. Topics include prevention techniques, continuous health monitoring, wireless and mobile technologies and standards for medical devices, personalized healthcare, body area networks, implantable devices, smartphone-based healthcare solutions, intelligent emergency management systems, pervasive healthcare data access, personal and electronic medical record systems, mobile telemedicine, context-awareness, and case studies of pervasive solutions for various health conditions and challenges.

The goals for each student in this course are:
  • To understand the technological foundations of pervasive health systems and applications.
  • To understand human-centered aspects of pervasive health care such as societal impact, security and privacy concerns, human-machine interactions, ethical concerns, etc.
  • To be able to independently design, build, and evaluate an example of a pervasive health care system and/or application.
  • To be able to independently research, understand, and present a concrete topic or application scenario in pervasive health.
  • To have outstanding oral and written communication skills.

Course Materials


While there is no required textbook in this course, the following books are good resources to learn more about the topic of pervasive health, eHealth, and mHealth:

  • Pervasive Healthcare Computing (EMR/EHR, Wireless and Health Monitoring), U. Varshney, Springer, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-4419-0214-6.
  • Pervasive Computing in Healthcare, A. Mihailidis (Editor), J. E. Bardram (Editor), CRC Press, 1st Edition, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-8493-3621-8.

Course Information:

  • Instructor: Christian Poellabauer
  • - Office hours: M 9-10, T 1-2
  • - Office: 325D Cushing Hall
  • - Email: cpoellab@cse.nd.edu

  • TA: Nikhil Yadav
  • - Office hours: W 12-1
  • - Location: 213 Cushing Hall
  • - Email: nyadav@nd.edu

  • Class location: 223 DeBartolo Hall
  • Lecture times: MW 10.40-11.30am

News Items:

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