Alistair Barros sees a future where people can use mobile phones to perform physiological checks such as blood tests or alcohol breath tests to keep track of their personal health.
He said the test results could trigger checks on online databases for related symptoms, to find medical expertise or keep track of epidemiological trends in geographic areas.
"This could also be combined with access to their electronic health record," Professor Barros said.
"Because of the ageing population, mobile health is a big area for service entrepreneurs in the future."
Professor Barros, a former global research leader for SAP Research's Internet of Services field who was also the technical pioneer behind the state government's successful Smart Services Queensland platform, has devoted most of his 25-year career to improving service delivery using ICT.
He will be at the forefront of these changes as Australia's first Smart Services CRC Chair of Services Science at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), a position he formally started in May.
"This is an exciting, emerging field and Australia needs to be leading these innovations given the extent of its services industries," Professor Barros said.
"Mobile phones are driving new innovations and making the need for services to be more easily accessible outside company firewalls."
Over the next three years, Professor Barros will oversee a groundbreaking research field focused on using IT to improve the services sector, an area that employs 80 per cent of Australians in industries including retail, tourism, finance, computing, online technology and media.
He will use international experience, including his work to provide the overarching vision for services-related research and development in the European Union, to put Australia at the cutting-edge of smarter services research.
Professor Barros, who will work within QUT's Information Systems discipline, said web-based hubs and third-parties such as Google and Salesforce.com would continue to drive innovations through developing mobile applications and creating streamlined services.
"It's actually these third parties on the web that are accelerating services and driving up new revenue opportunities," he said.
"Ten years from now people are going to have a significantly heightened expectation of what they can do with their mobile phones especially around services. We should be able to pre-empt what consumers want."
For example, Professor Barros said homebuyers would one day visit a central website offering everything that people need to know about buying a home, including profiles of different suburbs and information about mortgages, legal matters and insurance.
Warren Bradey, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Smart Services CRC, a research and development company which has partnered with QUT to establish the new chair position, said services should be delivered in a smarter way.
"We're hoping to create a link between the research community and industries to work collaboratively on how we can enhance the way services are delivered, irrespective of where people live," Mr Bradey said.
Smart services research already underway at QUT includes: training in virtual worlds, improving interactive mobile video experience and the integration of ICT into financial services.
Media contact: Stephanie Harrington, QUT media officer, 07 3138 1150, stephanie.harrington@qut.edu.au
