Middleware platform for the synchronisation of mobile medical data

Abstract

Several healthcare providers are adopting mobile technologies to facilitate remote transfer of the electronic health record (EHR). This paradigm is called mobile health (mHealth) and can enable caregivers to collect and transmit patient data in remote healthcare delivery scenarios. The challenge however is that mobile devices use wireless mediums such as Wi-Fi and 4G and these communication channels can experience network fluctuations and services unavailability. Also, the services unavailability can lead to difficult decision-making by the caregivers. Thus, this paper proposes a middleware platform that synchronises the EHR between the mobile devices of caregivers and the health information system (HIS) in soft-real-time. Specifically, the proposed system explores the impact on bandwidth consumption using two medical data transfer approaches: whole state medical data propagation, and the update only medical data propagation. The experimental results show that the latter approach facilitates faster medical data synchronisation and optimal utilisation of the wireless bandwidth.