A Cloud-Assisted Wearable System for Physical Rehabilitation

Abstract

Wearable smart devices, ubiquitous Internet connectivity, and Cloud-computing are posing traditional health-care system against a disruptive revolution. The integration of Body Sensor Networks (BSN) systems and Cloud-computing technologies can effectively foster the spread of mobile-Health (mHealth) services in real life, such as physical rehabilitation assistance. The continuous remote monitoring of patients during rehabilitation exercises is one of the key aspect to follow the patients at all post-admission stages, to objectively assess their improvements, as well as to significantly reduce many of the costs associated with the whole process. In addition, patients can perform rehabilitation exercises at home and still be monitored - and followed - remotely, with clear benefit in terms of comfort, physical stress, and again economic costs. This paper describes Rehab-aaService, a hardware/software system for physical rehabilitation assistance. It is based on a three-tier architecture involving smart wearable motion sensor nodes, a personal mobile device, and a Cloud-computing infrastructure supported by the BodyCloud framework.