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Two important emerging influences on health care technology:

1. Development of national digital networking infrastructure and geometric increases in the availability of “personal” bandwidth (to the home or portable devices such as cell phones and PDAs)

2. Development of the national networking infrastructure is driven at the leading edge by a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors, the NGI initiative; and is driven at the trailing edge by a proliferation of end-user network-based applications typified by “e-commerce”

The decreasing size of electronics provided by UV lithography chip fabrication techniques and the increasing levels of integration has led to a proliferation of ever smaller and “smarter” devices for computing and communication. Similar advances in hybrid chip fabrication and techniques for constructing micro electro-mechanical devices (MEMs) promises a literal revolution in sensing and networking.

The confluence of these factors (rapid improvements in size, speed, functionality and cost) and the ubiquity they bring to information and communication is what we refer to as pervasive computing.