Building on decades of success in digital infrastructure and biomedical innovation, we propose the Personal Care Utility (PCU) - a cybernetic system for lifelong health guidance. PCU is conceived as a global, AI-powered utility that continuously orchestrates multimodal data, knowledge, and services to assist individuals and populations alike. Drawing on multimodal agents, event-centric modeling, and contextual inference, it offers three essential capabilities: (1) trusted health information tailored to the individual, (2) proactive health navigation and behavior guidance, and (3) ongoing interpretation of recovery and treatment response after medical events. Unlike conventional episodic care, PCU functions as an ambient, adaptive companion - observing, interpreting, and guiding health in real time across daily life. By integrating personal sensing, experiential computing, and population-level analytics, PCU promises not only improved outcomes for individuals but also a new substrate for public health and scientific discovery. We describe the architecture, design principles, and implementation challenges of this emerging paradigm.
翻译:基于数字基础设施与生物医学创新数十年来的成功实践,我们提出个人健康照护基础设施(PCU)——一种用于终身健康指导的调控系统。PCU被构想为一个全球性的、由人工智能驱动的公共基础设施,持续整合多模态数据、知识与服务,为个体及群体提供支持。依托多模态智能体、以事件为中心的建模及上下文推理技术,该系统具备三项核心功能:(1)提供面向个体的可信健康信息;(2)实现主动式健康导航与行为指导;(3)对医疗事件后的恢复过程及治疗反应进行持续解读。与传统间歇式医疗模式不同,PCU作为一种环境化、自适应的健康伴侣,能够在日常生活中实时观察、解读并指导健康状态。通过整合个人感知技术、体验式计算及群体层面分析,PCU不仅有望提升个体健康结果,更将为公共卫生与科学发现提供新的基础平台。本文阐述了这一新兴范式的体系架构、设计原则与实施挑战。