Emerging Frontiers in Smart Environment and Healthcare – A Vision

The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed unprecedented development and growth in information technology. What began as a foundational technology in exploring science and engineering has evolved into ground-breaking tools in most fields of endeavor. Today, rapidly expanding applications of informatics are being developed in diverse fields such as business management, transportation, environmental monitoring, building management, various aspects of healthcare, and even in fine arts. Driven by new developments in data analytics, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning neural networks, enormous opportunities are opening up in therapeutic application of IT well beyond clinical diagnostic aids and computational biology. Augmentation of human mental faculties particularly with respect to multivariate analysis will drive major areas of research in the coming years. A number of potential research areas are presented in the paper.