A pluggable IoT middleware for integrating data of wearable medical devices

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly, producing various internet connected devices. It is applied in multiple domains, having become a milestone advancement, especially in healthcare. The conjunction of these domains foresees the formulation of a global healthcare system where everyone will be connected through IoT wearable medical devices, whereas every datum will be recorded without being affected by given locations and circumstances. However, nowadays IoT is limited to managing all these devices, as emerging technologies must manage their dramatic increase and heterogeneity. Consequently, it is essential to create and adopt new techniques for automatically distinguishing the devices' nature and characteristics, towards collecting and analyzing their data. This manuscript proposes a data integration IoT middleware for addressing this gap, by automatically connecting and integrating IoT heterogeneous wearable medical devices with various healthcare platforms, whilst interacting only with the reliable and relevant ones. Moreover, the middleware enables a plug'n’play functionality for each platform exploiting it, since they neither need to have further knowledge of the connected devices' interfaces nor to be parameterized for collecting their data through the middleware. The middleware is evaluated through diverse healthcare scenarios, producing results of high accuracy and reliability, verifying its applicability in the healthcare domain.