BT futurologist Ian Pearson looks at how technological developments could help us all stay healthier in 2020.
BT is already developing a wide range of unobtrusive home sensor networks that raise warnings when people deviate significantly from their normal behaviour.
This allows them to stay in their own homes with a high degree of independence, but confident that medical services would be alerted quickly in the event of a problem.
Health monitors of various kinds will be present in many people's homes. Bathroom technology may be able to routinely pick up potential ailments well before the person has noticed anything.
Smart toilets could check urine for proteins to indicate an infection, or for sugars that would indicate diabetes. Toothbrushes could warn of mouth infections and bad breath.
Scales could be a key part of personalised, networked weight management programmes that link to diet monitoring via various kitchen sensors. Even digital bathroom mirrors could check a person's eyes for a variety of potential symptoms.
Food packing in 2020 will contain sensors and smart labels that warn when food is no longer fit to eat. It will also contain nutritional and calorific content in a way that can be electronically communicated.
By networking all these sensors to online expert systems, early diagnosis and treatment could save many lives as well as health costs - and people will be able to stay in better health for more of the time.
Increasing terrorist threats make it increasingly likely that many people will wear personal sensor devices that can quickly identify dangers in the environment such as viruses, toxins and radiation, giving the wearer the best possible chance of survival when they are out and about.
Even today, devices are being demonstrated that can sense just two or three molecules of particular substances. Networking these devices would provide authorities with important information on the spread of a threat, even if it doesn't save some individuals.
There is also the possibility that we might be able to get localised disease forecasts in the same manner as pollen forecasts today.
Already, medical expert systems can do as well at diagnosing ailments as most GPs. As a result, we are already seeing some functions that used to require senior medical staff being carried out at nurse level.
This trend is likely to accelerate, with increasingly more health care being provided by relatively unqualified medical staff backed up by sophisticated IT systems.
This will probably include a high degree of self-diagnosis, with networked home test kits IT to recommend treatment, with any prescriptions vetted by pharmacists on the basis of the test results. All of this could be DNA-authenticated to ensure that only the person with the problem is the one who receives the medication.
In this future, we would be able to reach a much higher level of overall health throughout society, without the extra staff and funds that current approaches would need.