Abstract
This paper presents a prototype of a telemonitoring system, based on a BAN (Body Area Network) that is integrated by a Bluetooth (BT) pulse oximeter, a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, and a smartphone. The smartphone is the hardware platformfor running a Python software that manages the Bluetooth piconet formed by the sensors. Thus the smartphone forwards the data received from the Bluetooth devices, encoded into JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), to a central server. This server provides universal access to the information of the patient's location and health status through a web application based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology. Additionally, for the described prototype, the study presents some performance analyses about several topics that are of great interest for the applicability of the prototype: (i) the technique used to forward the patient's location and health status, (ii) the power consumption of the smartphone (which is compared with the measurements of an equivalent software developed for Java Micro Edition platform), and (iii) the web browser compatibility of the web application developed for the control and monitoring of the patients.
Highlights
IntroductionIn the context of e-Health (i.e., the application of information and communication technologies to the health area), remote monitoring is one of the most representative applications and one of the e-Health services which implies more technologic and logistical challenges.The term “chronic diseases” (applied to disorders such as diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or depression) is employed to refer to health problems that, while not being transmissible diseases, persist over time and require some degree of care
In the context of e-Health, remote monitoring is one of the most representative applications and one of the e-Health services which implies more technologic and logistical challenges.The term “chronic diseases” is employed to refer to health problems that, while not being transmissible diseases, persist over time and require some degree of care
This section includes (i) the performance evaluation of the HTTP pipelining mode, used by the Node of Control (NC) component to forward the patient’s location and health status; (ii) the power consumption tests which are carried out for the NC component, under different monitoring conditions; (iii) the compatibility tests that have been executed for the Control and monitoring units (CMU) units with different browsers
Summary
In the context of e-Health (i.e., the application of information and communication technologies to the health area), remote monitoring is one of the most representative applications and one of the e-Health services which implies more technologic and logistical challenges.The term “chronic diseases” (applied to disorders such as diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or depression) is employed to refer to health problems that, while not being transmissible diseases, persist over time and require some degree of care. Epidemiological data from 2000 indicate that, globally, nontransmissible diseases and mental disorders have entailed a mortality rate of 59% and 46% of the total morbidity [1]. There are predictions that, for 2020, both types of conditions will lead to a 78% of the global morbidity in developed countries [1]. It cannot be neglected that these diseases impact on the health of the population and on the economic resources of the citizens and states. In the United States where health cost per capita is higher than the average of other developed countries [2], the total expenditure on health due to chronic diseases increased from 78% in 2002 up to 84% in 2009 [3, 4]
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