Prof.Abdelsalam (Sumi) Helal

University of Bologna

Abstract

Digital Health is revolutionizing healthcare with a greater focus on prevention rather than treatment. Its vision is to exploit technology advances to replace the existing point-of-care reactive system by a continuum-of-care, always-on proactive health system. This talk highlights the forces of change that will rapidly shape the future of health, including the increasing prevalence of digital health technologies, the use of data to personalize care and to benefit from the AI revolution we are witnessing today, and the changing role of patients in their care. Ultimately, the end game is to improve health outcomes, even eradicate certain diseases, while reducing the unit and total cost of care.

Advancements in mobile computing, sensor technologies, and networking infrastructures are in the center of creating a paradigm shift in health management and delivery. These technologies enable innovative solutions for a wide range of needs, from monitoring chronic diseases and supporting healthy aging to providing emergency response and telemedicine services. By harnessing AI-driven analytics and therapeutics driven by real-time bio/social/behavioral sensor data fusion, we will be able to glean actionable insights—and even deliver interventions and actuations—from such large- and multi-scale, multimodal health data.

We will examine past research and lessons learnt at the University of Florida including the role of wearables and smart homes in digital health. We'll explore how these technologies can enable graceful and safe aging-in-place, monitor patient health, provide personalized care, and support patients in managing their own health. The talk concludes with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for digital health, and the role that mobility, sensing, and networking can play in shaping the future of health.

Biography

Abdelsalam Ali Helal (aka: Sumi Helal) is a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Bologna, Italy. Prior to joining the University of Bologna, he spent 26 years as associate and then full processor in the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Department at the University of Florida, USA. At University of Florida, he directed the Mobile and Pervasive Computing Laboratory, co-founded and directed the Gator Tech Smart House - a real-world deployment project that aimed at identifying key barriers and opportunities to make the Smart Home concept a common place (creating the "Smart Home in a Box" concept). His active areas of research focus on architectural and programmability aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), service-oriented IoT architectures, IoT edge intelligence, and pervasive/ubiquitous systems and their human-centric applications, especially in the Digital Health area. Helal is also a technologist at heart who founded several successful ventures in the areas of IoT and Digital Health. His patents that came out of his research were licensed by the top multinational tech industry including Google, Apple, Samsung, Bosch, Siemens, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T among others. Helal is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, AAAS, AAIA, IET, and a member of Academia Europaea. He can be contacted at: helal@acm.org.