The Health Avatar: Privacy-Aware Monitoring and Management

The rapidly increasing number of health monitoring devices, mainly wearables, will let users monitor their health and habitual parameters in a simple and easy way. However, the diversity of available platforms calls for simplified, standard solutions that can offer integrated tools to users--that is, patients, professionals, and practitioners. The authors present the idea of a health avatar that's used as the electronic equivalent of a human and features a dynamic life profile corresponding to the human owner's physical status, living conditions, and habits. They examine how such avatars can be used to improve the quality of health and life.