Universal Access to Health Services Through the Digital Terrestrial Television

Abstract

The Western World has almost completed the transition toward the Digital Television (DTV), and in particular toward the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). In every home there is at least one decoder for the DTT. Some of them have a modem, to connect to a telephonic return line, and a Smart Card reader, both required by the “Pay TV” channels. Since those readers are compatible with the Governmental Smart Cards, a new access for the masses to secure and confidential digital services is nowadays available in our Information Society. “T-Government” defines the set of services provided by Governments or private entities via DTT. “Multimedia Home Platform” is the standard for DTT applications. A Local Health will be no more justified for offering services only through the Web disregarding both the broadcast and the return channels of the DTT since by doing so it would contribute to deepen the “digital divide” between skilled (young) people and unskilled (elder) people. The author defines a scenario for providing such T-Health Services both for patients (T-monitoring health parameters) and healthy citizens. These latter will have a bunch of services over DTT, not only informative or interactive applications on the Set top Box, but also transactional services through the secure return channel. However, much effort has to be spent to guarantee the usability of that new interface which is quite different from that of a Web application. The author designed, tested and redesigned a suite of DTT applications as a “proof of concept” to show the potential of this new platform for health information services. DTT may represent a real contribution to bring social healthcare and wellness.