Abstract
BackgroundProviding remote health monitoring to specific groups of patients represents an issue of great relevance for the national health systems, because of the costs related to moving health operators, the time spent to reach remote sites, and the high number of people needing health assistance. At the same time, some assistance activities, like those related to chronical diseases, may be satisfied through a remote interaction with the patient, without a direct medical examination.MethodsMoving from this considerations, our paper proposes a system architecture for the provisioning of remote health assistance to older adults, based on a blind management of a network of wireless medical devices, and an interactive TV Set Top Box for accessing health related data. The selection of TV as the interface between the user and the system is specifically targeted to older adults. Due to the private nature of the information exchanged, a certified procedure is implemented for data delivery, through the use of non conditional smart cards. All these functions may be accomplished through a proper design of the system management, and a suitable interactive application.ResultsThe interactive application acting as the interface between the user and the system on the TV monitor has been evaluated able to help readability and clear understanding of the contents and functions proposed. Thanks to the limited amount of data to transfer, even a Set Top Box equipped with a traditional PSTN modem may be used to support the proposed service at a basic level; more advanced features, like audio/video connection, may be activated if the Set Top Box enables a broadband connection (e.g. ADSL).ConclusionsThe proposed layered architecture for a remote health monitoring system can be tailored to address a wide range of needs, according with each patient’s conditions and capabilities. The system exploits the potentialities offered by Digital Television receivers, a friendly MHP interface, and the familiar remote control, to make the service effective and easy to use also for elderly people.
Highlights
Providing remote health monitoring to specific groups of patients represents an issue of great relevance for the national health systems, because of the costs related to moving health operators, the time spent to reach remote sites, and the high number of people needing health assistance
The functions discussed above have been included in the software project developed to implement the proposed system: by this way, users that are not so familiar with typing text through the remote control, can provide the data requested for accessing the remote assistance service, just by inserting their smart cards
In order to evaluate the impact of smart card related operations on the timely response of the application, when requesting a remote connection through the Set Top Boxes (STB) return channel interface, we performed a number of experimental tests, to measure the average time needed to complete specific operations
Summary
Providing remote health monitoring to specific groups of patients represents an issue of great relevance for the national health systems, because of the costs related to moving health operators, the time spent to reach remote sites, and the high number of people needing health assistance. At the same time, providing efficient and high-quality healthcare services to elderly people may be extremely expensive, for their reduced mobility, and for the need of moving medical equipments and operators. Communication-based technologies may allow elderly people, and, in general, people with limited mobility (such as small communities living in rural areas) or with impairments, to remotely access healthcare services, overcoming geographic barriers, and ensuring that services of similar quality may be provided to people living in different parts of a country. We propose a TV-based healthcare service (t-health) for assisted living, to enable elderly and mobility impaired people to collect some basic vital parameters values, and send them to a remote monitoring center, besides having the possibility of looking at their personal medical records. Multimedia input and output, in the form of graphics and speech delivered through the TV receiver, make the system appear less computer-like, and more attractive to users who are not computer-oriented
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