Research on Trans-Boundary Convergence of Different Service Chains in Health Service Ecosystem

With the aging of the population and the development of modern service industries, the health service ecosystem (HSE) is beginning to emerge. As a new form of healthcare industry in the Internet era, HSE has its inherent “social cyber” complexity: the source of healthcare service is social, and such sociality aggravates the diversity, uncertainty, and dynamics of service supply. This poses new challenges to the service matching between diverse supply and personalized requirements for aged persons. In order to meet this challenge, it is necessary to conduct the trans-boundary cooperation and integration between service chains in different domains, including business convergence, interface convergence and value convergence. This task is very difficult and there is currently no common method. In order to change such a situation, this paper proposes an interactive trans-boundary convergence method for health service ecosystem based on micro-service architecture. Firstly, the method confirms the value of service convergence, and then uses this as a driving force to achieve business process integration of different service chains. Then, the business coupling between different service chains is converted into asynchronous data communication to achieve interface convergence. Finally, the value assessment of service convergence is given to realize the value convergence. This method has been verified in the construction of National healthcare service platform for the elderly in China. The results demonstrate that our method has a substantial promise.

Sensor-as-a-Service: Convergence of Sensor Analytic Point Solutions (SNAPS) and Pay-A-Penny-Per-Use (PAPPU) Paradigm as a Catalyst for Democratization of Healthcare in Underserved Communities

In this manuscript, we discuss relevant socioeconomic factors for developing and implementing sensor analytic point solutions (SNAPS) as point-of-care tools to serve impoverished communities. The distinct economic, environmental, cultural, and ethical paradigms that affect economically disadvantaged users add complexity to the process of technology development and deployment beyond the science and engineering issues. We begin by contextualizing the environmental burden of disease in select low-income regions around the world, including environmental hazards at work, home, and the broader community environment, where SNAPS may be helpful in the prevention and mitigation of human exposure to harmful biological vectors and chemical agents. We offer examples of SNAPS designed for economically disadvantaged users, specifically for supporting decision-making in cases of tuberculosis (TB) infection and mercury exposure. We follow-up by discussing the economic challenges that are involved in the phased implementation of diagnostic tools in low-income markets and describe a micropayment-based systems-as-a-service approach (pay-a-penny-per-use—PAPPU), which may be catalytic for the adoption of low-end, low-margin, low-research, and the development SNAPS. Finally, we provide some insights into the social and ethical considerations for the assimilation of SNAPS to improve health outcomes in marginalized communities.