Much development work is ongoing addressing technologies and their application in the health domain, in order to achieve solutions that are non-invasive to every day life and work. As with many previous phases of informatics to support health, currently the developments are in islands and there is considerable untapped potential for synergy. Much research development is happening in other domains and show potential for health reversioning and deployment once proven. This paper explores some of the technological, societal and domain-specific issues surrounding this emerging concept of pervasiveness. It concludes that pervasive support to care is emerging but further work on minimizing risk and marketing the concept to professionals and laypeople is necessary to ensure an effective deployment.

health, pervasive technology, human information processing, societal issues, portable devices, expert systems