Parsimonious Information Technologies
for Pixels, Perception, Wetware and Simulation:
Issues for Petrasek’s Global Virtual Hospital System
Alan H. Barr
Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
California Institute of Technology
ABSTRACT
New types of “engaging” embedded systems and devices
will greatly assist future medical care, as for
Petrasek’s envisioned Global Virtual Hospital System
. The most effective devices will need to be
designed in a “parsimonious” way for their economic
use of energy, digital bits, communication time,
and in terms of trading more expensive physical st
ructures for less expensive
computational ones. At
the technological level, each
device needs a carefully selected “mat
ched set” of technological tradeoffs
between the particular medical and
user ends and means. The matche
d set of choices would carefully
make sure that the device “met
hods” and implementations lead reli
ably to the device “goals” and
purposes.
In addition, however, there is a critical user-oriented
aspect where the devices will also need to utilize
highly “engaging environments” that are not too cumber
some or too tiring to use. People are becoming
increasingly sophisticated with regard to the inter
active requirements they have for their devices, from
their experience with digital medi
a, iPhones, video computer games
and other types of environments
that “engage” a person’s attention for long peri
ods of time, and without
annoying delays and
frustrations.
It is an absolute requirement that the devices in
corporate highly engaging environments so that using
them does not tire the user or cause
unnecessary medical e
rrors and delays.
This improved type of portable de
vice, scanners, services and info
rmation methods w
ould efficiently
and more accurately gather sufficiently detailed medical information from the patient’s body, help relay
sufficient parts of the patient info
rmation electronically to a worldw
ide net of physicians and relay
appropriate results and prescriptions back to the patient.
Categories and Subject Descriptors:
K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY, K.4.0 General;
H. Information Systems, H.0 GENERAL
General Terms:
Design, Human Factors
Keywords:
engaging, environments, gl
obal, hospital, virtual
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CASES’10
, October 24–29, 2010, Sco
ttsdale,Arizona, USA.
ACM 978-1-60558-903-9/10/10.
55