Framework of sensor based monitoring for pervasive patient care.
Sensor based health systems can often become difficult to use, extend and sustain. The authors propose a framework for designing sensor based health monitoring systems aiming to provide extensible and usable monitoring services in the scope of pervasive patient care. The authors' approach relies on a distributed system for monitoring the patient health status anytime anywhere and detecting potential health complications, for which healthcare professionals and patients are notified accordingly. Portable or wearable sensing devices measure the patient's physiological parameters, a smart mobile device collects and analyses the sensor data, a Medical Center system receives notifications on the detected health condition, and a Health Professional Platform is used by formal caregivers in order to review the patient condition and configure monitoring schemas. A Service oriented architecture is utilised to provide extensible functional components and interoperable interactions among the diversified system components. The framework was applied within the REMOTE ambient assisted living project in which a prototype system was developed, utilising Bluetooth to communicate with the sensors and Web services for data exchange. A scenario of using the REMOTE system and preliminary usability results show the applicability, usefulness and virtue of our approach.
Healthcare technology letters