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Due to advances in treatment and people's living longer, chronic diseases are becoming more common among our population. This is a leading contributor to the increasing burden on our current healthcare system. To reduce this burden and sufficiently meet the needs of this growing segment of the population, healthcare organizations must encourage the elderly to take a more active role in caring for their own health and well-being. Technology may offer a solution to this shortcoming. “Positive Technology” focuses on the use of technology for improving the quality of our personal experience, and it suggests specific strategies for modifying/improving each of the different dimensions involved - Emotional Quality (affect regulation); Engagement/Actualization (presence and flow); Connectdness (collective intentions and networked flow) - and for generating motivation and engagement in the process. “Transformative Technology” are technologically-mediated experiences that support positive, enduring transformation of the self-world. The transformative content is delivered through a set of experiential affordances, which are stimuli designed to elicit emotional and cognitive involvement in the designed experience: (i) emotional affordances; (ii) epistemic affordances. The paper discusses discuss the possible role of positive and transormative technologies for healthy living and active ageing by presenting different practical applications of this approach recently developed by our team.

Creating a significant negative impact on both their quality of life and the quality of patient care with an evident economical burden for the healthcare system, there is a growing concern over physician burnout. The range of interventions and treatments that have been used to address this problem, however, appear quite fragmented and lack compelling efficacy. We describe the main factors known to contribute to the development of physician burnout as well as currently available treatments. Studies seem to indicate that both specialisation area as well as personality traits may contribute to the manifestation. The highest risk specialties appear to be critical care physicians, emergency physicians, oncologists and internal medicine physicians, while the highest risk personality attributes are high neuroticism, low agreeableness, introversion, and negative affectivity. In addition, being exceedingly enthusiastic about one's work and having high aspirations at work, with an idealistic approach, also serve as factors which contribute to increased risk of burnout, and in particular for those who are new to the occupation.

Information and communication technologies are widely and rapidly spreading in people’s daily lives. But what is the possible role of the mass proliferation of digital devices in supporting healthy living and active ageing? Are they useful in fostering personal growth and individual integration of the elderly, by promoting satisfaction, opportunities for action, and self-expression? Rather, do they enhance automation, impose constraints on personal initiative, and result in compulsive consumption of information? In this chapter, we suggest that possible answers to these questions will be offered by the "Positive Technology" approach, i.e., the scientific and applied approach to using technology so that it improves the quality of our personal experiences through its structuring, augmentation, and/or replacement. First, we suggest that it is possible to use technology to manipulate the quality of experience with the goal of increasing wellness and generating strengths and resilience in individuals, organizations, and society. Then, we classify positive technologies according to their effects on these three features of personal experience - Hedonic: technologies used to induce positive and pleasant experiences; Eudaimonic: technologies used to support individuals in reaching engaging and self-actualizing experiences; Social/Interpersonal: technologies used to support and improve the connectedness between individuals, groups, and organizations. Finally, we discuss the possible role of positive technologies for healthy living and active ageing by presenting different practical applications of this approach.

Information and communication technologies are widely and rapidly spreading in people’s daily lives. But what is the possible role of the mass proliferation of digital devices in supporting healthy living and active ageing? Are they useful in fostering personal growth and individual integration of the elderly, by promoting satisfaction, opportunities for action, and self-expression? Rather, do they enhance automation, impose constraints on personal initiative, and result in compulsive consumption of information? In this chapter, we suggest that possible answers to these questions will be offered by the "Positive Technology" approach, i.e., the scientific and applied approach to using technology so that it improves the quality of our personal experiences through its structuring, augmentation, and/or replacement. First, we suggest that it is possible to use technology to manipulate the quality of experience with the goal of increasing wellness and generating strengths and resilience in individuals, organizations, and society. Then, we classify positive technologies according to their effects on these three features of personal experience - Hedonic: technologies used to induce positive and pleasant experiences; Eudaimonic: technologies used to support individuals in reaching engaging and self-actualizing experiences; Social/Interpersonal: technologies used to support and improve the connectedness between individuals, groups, and organizations. Finally, we discuss the possible role of positive technologies for healthy living and active ageing by presenting different practical applications of this approach.

The combination of smart phones, wearable sensor devices and social media offer new ways of monitoring and promoting mental and physical wellbeing. In this contribution, we describe recent developments in the field of mobile healthcare (or mHealth), by focusing in particular on mobile mental health applications. First, we examine the potential benefits associated with this approach, providing examples from existing projects. Next, we identify and explain possible differences in focus between mobile mental health and mobile wellbeing applications. Finally, we discuss some open challenges associated with the implementation of this vision, ranging from the lack of evidence-based validation to privacy, security and ethical concerns.

Self tracking is a recent trend in e-health that refers to the collection, elaboration and visualization of personal health data through ubiquitous computing tools such as mobile devices and wearable sensors. Here, we describe the design of a mobile self-tracking platform that has been specifically designed for clinical and research applications in the field of mental health. The smartphone-based application allows collecting a) self-reported feelings and activities from pre-programmed questionnaires; b) electrocardiographic (ECG) data from a wireless sensor platform worn by the user; c) movement activity information obtained from a tri-axis accelerometer embedded in the wearable platform. Physiological signals are further processed by the application and stored on the smartphone's memory. The mobile data collection platform is free and released under an open source licence to allow wider adoption by the research community (download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/psychlog/).

In this study we consider neurophysiological aspects for the assessment of stress-related disorders. EEG Alpha Asymmetry could represent an effective method to be used in the virtual environment. Nonetheless, new protocols need to be defined. In this study herein, we present two methods and a case study.

Motor imagery is the mental simulation of a movement without motor output. In recent years, there has been growing interest towards the application of motor imagery-based training, or "mental practice", in stroke rehabilitation. We have developed a virtual reality prototype (the VR Mirror) to support patients in performing mental practice. The VR Mirror displays a three-dimensional simulation of the movement to be imagined, using data acquired from the healthy arm. We tested the system with nine post-stroke patients with chronic motor impairment of the upper limb. After eight weeks of training with the VR Mirror, remarkable improvement was noted in three cases, slight improvement in two cases, and no improvement in four cases. All patients showed a good acceptance of the procedure, suggesting that virtual reality technology can be successfully integrated in mental practice interventions.

Clinical psychologists have traditionally shied away from technology, perhaps because many of the therapeutic elements of psychotherapy rely on verbal and nonverbal interpersonal communication. Although nothing will ever replace face-to-face communication as the key element of psychological practice, the advance of technology is now offering new communication tools that psychologist and their patients feel comfortable using for clinical care. This chapter presents the concept of e-therapy and examines the possible role of Internet and related media in psychotherapy. Current clinical applications are presented including equipment, research, and examples of direct clinical care. Different modes of online mental health care, including e-mail counselling, selfhelp therapy and self-help groups are analysed and discussed. The chapter also focuses on the technology used in e-therapy ¿ email, IRC, videoconference - providing information about the equipment and its clinical use. A particular focus is given to the analysis of shared hypermedia, new Internet tools in which different users, who are simultaneously browsing the same Web site, can communicate and share files. The chapter concludes with suggestions for evaluating the value of adding e-therapy to existing clinical practices.