VISIGNET: a wireless body area network with cloud data storage for the telemonitoring of vital signs

Abstract

Telemonitoring systems, including Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN), are an important support for the monitoring of patients with chronic diseases. This article shows the development and evaluation process of VISIGNET, a prototype open hardware interoperable vital signs monitoring system that captures data of clinical variables from a patient and sends them to a cloud-based service for their remote visualization. The article first presents a synthesis of the system design, which consists of a WBAN that captures data from three sensors, namely heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure. Then, it explains the WBAN operation and the data transmission process to Xively, a cloud service. Finally, this article shows the findings of the evaluation of the system, analyzing parameters like coverage, the Frame Error Rate (FER), end-to-end delay, and the battery life of the sensors. It also shows the implementation of a case study with 100 patients from two health centers.