Great changes are occurring these days with regard to individuals’ health needs and habits in line with the changes in individual and social lifestyles, habits, and needs. The changes in social lifestyle correspond to the cases of digitalization and mobile society.
The effects of growing technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, deep learning and artificial neural networks, smart decision support systems, wearable technologies, sensors, autonomous/robotic devices, virtual reality, augmented reality, cloud computing systems, the Internet of Things and broadband Internet technologies, the Web, real-time data transfer, big data, blockchain technology, 3D printers, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and quantum computing have started a transformation in social and economic life. Smart health involves the sum of the approaches toward improving health services by analyzing health data and aiming to increase individual awareness of one’s health and quality of life. As a result of the ways of thinking, understanding, and realization created by the use of information and communication technologies, smart health constitutes the next stage in the digital transformation of health.
With digitalization now integrated into the National Health System as included in the 2013-2017 Strategic Plan of the Turkish Republic Ministry of Health and established within the scope of the Health Transformation Project in 2015, eHealth components have begun being implemented. In August 2021, the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy was published by the Republic of Turkey Digital Transformation Office within the scope of the 11th Development Plan and the Presidential Annual Programs. As emphasized among the strategic priorities determined in the report, the aim is to increase artificial intelligence’s contributions to the gross domestic product to 5% by the end of 2025.
The levels of information access, processing and usage determine the welfare levels of 21st-century countries. However, technological developments with complex characteristics and legal-ethical regulations have yet to be synchronized with their future aspects. In the future, smart health applications will be carried to a much higher level than anticipated with the support of genomics, materials science, nanotechnology, tissue engineering, knowledge banks, data processing, natural language processing, virtual reality, and medical informatics. |
