A Mobile-Phone-Based Health Management System

Abstract

“Prevention is better than cure.” The system proposed in this chapter aims to achieve this. According to the bulletin report of Taiwan Ministry of Interior, the elder population in Taiwan at the end of 2008 was 2.4 million, about 10.4% of the total Taiwan population. This percentage has already exceeded the standard for aging society set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Furthermore, it is estimated that in 2025 the elder population in Taiwan will reach more than 20% of the total population; therefore, the “long-distance home health care service” has become one of the key emerging businesses in Taiwan. It was estimated that the market revenue of home health care for these elders reached 300 million dollars in 2010. In recent years, several studies integrating communication and sensor technologies for home health monitoring system have been discussed (Chang, 2004; Chen, 2008; Lee, 2006a, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b; J.L. Lin, 2005; T.H. Lin, 2004, Shu, 2005; Wu, 2004; Ye, 2006; Yu et al., 2005), such as monitoring long-term health data to find out the abnormal signs and monitoring the medical record regularly for chronic patients to cut down their treatment frequency, to save doctor’s treatment time, and to reduce medical expenses. Based on the sensor and communication technologies used, these systems can be categorized into two systems: immobile and mobile long-distance health monitoring systems. Our previous works all focused on mobile long-distance physiological signal measuring based on either a single-chipmicroprocessor or a smart phone. The physiological sensor used was a RFID ring-type pulse/temperature sensor. The measured data can be transmitted via different communication protocols, such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, HSDPA, GPRS, and TCP/IP. In order to meet the requirement for mobile health monitoring system (MHMS), the system design needs to adopt light modular sensors for data collection and wireless communication technology for mobility. The popular smart phones used in people’s daily life are the best devices for MHMS. In this chapter, a different mobile e-health-management system based on mobile physiological signal monitoring is presented to practice the idea of “Prevention is better than cure.” This system integrates a wearable ring-type pulse monitoring sensor and a portable biosignal