**3. Ubiquitous computing and healthcare: a bibliometric analysis**

A useful tool to better understand the extension and importance of Ubiquitous Computing in healthcare is the assessment of academic publications on this topic. The efforts undertaken by Universities and Research Centers to advance the technology and develop new possibilities of application demonstrate the expectations that society deposits on it, and also exhibit the potential that the field has to advance propelled by investments in research and development.

A search was conducted in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine database using the terms [(ubiquitous computing

#### **Figure 5.**

*Number of publications retrieved from the National Center for biotechnology information, U.S. National Library of Medicine database using the terms [(ubiquitous computing AND (health OR healthcare)]. Publications from 2010 to 2020 were considered.*

*The Role of Ubiquitous Computing in the Transformation of the Healthcare System DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98303*

AND (health OR healthcare)]. Publications from 2010 to 2020 were retrieved. The search returned 913 results. **Figure 5** depicts the distribution of these publications in the timeline. Interestingly, an important growth between 2013 and 2015 is evident. Besides, there is a constant improvement in the number of publications every year. In turn, the amount of publications demonstrates that there is space to better explore the subject.

## **4. Conclusions**

Based on the information exposed, we can conclude that the healthcare systems are under an important pressure caused by the population aging. Even countries with low- and middle-income are experiencing the rise of life expectancy. Obviously, this indicates advances in many social aspects, but also shows that society must be prepared to offer healthcare and life quality for this growing population group. It is crucial to develop policies to help people stay healthy and living independently as long as possible.

However, to achieve this goal, the challenges related to the adherence to treatments must be faced. Despite the improvement of healthcare access, there is still a lack of adherence to healthcare treatments and healthy habits, including exercise, for example. Indeed, the low adherence impacts negatively the effectiveness and cost of health treatments.

At the same time, despite these important challenges for healthcare providers, we also have a very unique opportunity to come up with the evolution and convergence of technology. The concept of ubiquitous computing is deeply involved with the IoT technology and its applications. After all, the vision of computation everywhere and everything is becoming reality through this growing network of smart objects.

These new technologies are proven to be a new and prosperous economic sector, since the number of connected devices is rapidly rising, as soon as the respective spending. Besides that, for the first time in medical history, it is possible to understand all aspects of the elements able to interfere in the population's health, from the functioning of the hospitals to individual behaviors in daily life. Finally, access to such information will transform the way we think and offer healthcare services.

## **Author details**

Ana Lídia Corrêa da Silva Moreira Interdisciplinary Center in Interactive Technologies, University of São Paulo (CITI-USP), São Paulo, Brazil

\*Address all correspondence to: lidialenzi@alumni.usp.br

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
