Ubiquitous Patient Monitoring Research Articles

O³HSC: Outsourced Online/Offline Hybrid Signcryption for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) enable ubiquitous monitoring of patients, which can change the future of healthcare services overwhelmingly. As the collected data of patients usually contain sensitive information, how to collect, transfer, store and share data securely and properly has become a concerning issue. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) can achieve data confidentiality and fine-grained access control simultaneously. Identity-based ring signature (IBRS) allows patients to prove their identity without leaking any extra (private) information. However, the heavy computational burden of ABE and IBRS is intolerable for most power-limited mobile devices, which account for a large proportion of WBAN devices. This paper combines the attribute-based online/offline encryption (ABOOE) and IBRS to achieve an outsourced online/offline hybrid signcryption ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O^{3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> HSC) scheme. As far as we know, this scheme is the first signcryption scheme that adopts IBRS and satisfies online/offline signcryption simultaneously. <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O^{3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> HSC divides the key generation and signcryption into offline and online phases to increase the throughput of the central authority and save the power resources of mobile devices, respectively. Besides, outsourced decryption and public signature verification are also realized. <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O^{3}\mathrm {HSC}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> achieves security under CCA and CMIA, and the performance analysis shows that <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O^{3}\mathrm {HSC}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is a lightweight and applicable scheme for WBAN.

Deep learning in pervasive health monitoring, design goals, applications, and architectures: An overview and a brief synthesis

The continuous growth of an aging population in some countries, and patients with chronic conditions needs the development of efficient solutions for healthcare. Pervasive Health Monitoring (PHM) is an important pervasive computing application that has the potential to provide patients with a high-quality medical service and enable quick-response alerting of critical conditions. To that end, PHM enables continuous and ubiquitous monitoring of patients' health and wellbeing using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as wearables and ambient sensors. In recent years, deep learning (DL) has attracted a growing interest from the research community to improve PHM applications. In this paper, we discuss the state-of-the-art of DL-based PHM, through identifying, (1) the main PHM applications where DL is successful, (2) design goals and objectives of using DL in PHM, and (3) design notes including DL architectures and data preprocessing. Finally, main advantages, limitations and challenges of the adoption of DL in PHM are discussed.

A hybrid energy-efficient routing protocol for wireless body area networks using ultra-low-power transceivers for eHealth care systems

One of the major applications of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), and the Internet of Things is the Electronic Health-Care systems. The progress in WBANs, and implanted health monitoring technologies have strong potential to alter the future of healthcare services by enabling ubiquitous monitoring of patients. An energy-efficient protocol is an important factor in the operation of eHealth care systems. A hybrid energy-efficient routing protocol is proposed in this paper for the distributed wireless body area network. In which a hybrid communication method and a new synchronization scheme are discussed. The hybrid communication enhances the network lifetime, and the synchronization scheme will consume less energy by avoiding collisions. The performance of the proposed protocol is analyzed, and it is compared with three baseline routing protocols at the 2.4 GHz ISM band with two ultra-low power transceivers.

Insole Optical Fiber Sensor Architecture for Remote Gait Analysis—An e-Health Solution

The advances and fast spread of mobile devices and technologies, we witness today, have extended its advantages over medical and health practice supported by mobile devices, giving rise to the growing research of Internet of Things (IoT), especially the e-Health field. The features provided by mobile technologies revealed to be of major importance when we consider the continuous aging of population and the consequent increase of its debilities. In addition to the increase of lifetime span of population, also the increase of health risks and their locomotive impairments increases, requiring a close monitoring and continuous evaluation. Such monitoring should be as noninvasive as possible, in order not to compromise the mobility and the day-to-day activities of citizens. Therefore, we present the development of a noninvasive optical fiber sensor (OFS) architecture adaptable to a shoe sole for plantar pressure remote monitoring, which is suitable to be integrated in an IoT e-Health solution to monitor the wellbeing of individuals. This paper explores the production of the OFS multiplexed network (using fiber Bragg gratings) to monitor the foot plantar pressure distribution during gait (walking movement). From the acquired gait data, it is possible to infer health conditions of the patient’s foot and spine posture. To guarantee the patients mobility, the proposed system consists of an OFS network integrated with a wireless transceiver to enable efficient ubiquitous monitoring of patients. This paper shows the calibration and measurement results, which reflect the accuracy of the proposed system, under normal walking in controlled area.

EPhysio: A Wearables-Enabled Platform for the Remote Management of Musculoskeletal Diseases.

Technology advancements in wireless communication and embedded computing are fostering their evolution from standalone elements to smart objects seamlessly integrated in the broader context of the Internet of Things. In this context, wearable sensors represent the building block for new cyber-physical social systems, which aim at improving the well-being of people by monitoring and measuring their activities and provide an immediate feedback to the users. In this paper, we introduce ePhysio, a large-scale and flexible platform for sensor-assisted physiotherapy and remote management of musculoskeletal diseases. The system leverages networking and computing tools to provide real-time and ubiquitous monitoring of patients. We propose three use cases which differ in scale and context and are characterized by different human interactions: single-user therapy, indoor group therapy, and on-field therapy. For each use case, we identify the social interactions, e.g., between the patient and the physician and between different users and the performance requirements in terms of monitoring frequency, communication, and computation. We then propose three related deployments, highlighting the technologies that can be applied in a real system. Finally, we describe a proof-of-concept implementation, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed solution.

A Survey on Wireless Body Area Networks for eHealthcare Systems in Residential Environments.

Current progress in wearable and implanted health monitoring technologies has strong potential to alter the future of healthcare services by enabling ubiquitous monitoring of patients. A typical health monitoring system consists of a network of wearable or implanted sensors that constantly monitor physiological parameters. Collected data are relayed using existing wireless communication protocols to a base station for additional processing. This article provides researchers with information to compare the existing low-power communication technologies that can potentially support the rapid development and deployment of WBAN systems, and mainly focuses on remote monitoring of elderly or chronically ill patients in residential environments.

Ultrawideband Signals in Medicine [Life Sciences

In the last decade, the utilization of radio technology for a variety of clinical and medical applications has increased dramatically. Advances in microelectronics have enabled the miniaturization and integration of biomedical sensors and radio transceivers into single units. Such wireless sensors can be worn or implanted, and they facilitate the continuous collection and transmission of physiological signals. The centrally coordinated or distributed interconnection of wireless biomedical sensors, referred to as a body area network (BAN), has already been standardized in IEEE Standard 802.15.6-2012. Besides narrowband (NB), IEEE Standard 802.15.6-2012 supports the use of ultrawideband (UWB) radio interfaces for wearable sensors. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines UWB signals to be those with fractional bandwidth exceeding 20% of the center frequency, or alternatively, a bandwidth greater than 500 MHz. A number of techniques can be used to generate UWB signals; the most widely used is the one referred to as impulse radio (IR) and consists of transmitting very narrow pulses in the time domain, commonly in the order of a few nanoseconds with fast rise times reaching 50 ps [1]. Another common approach to generate UWB signals is subcarrier aggregation in orthogonal frequency-domain multiplexing (OFDM), which is generally used for short-range nonmedical indoor communications. The very large bandwidth enables high-data-rate communications. In the presence of noise and power constraints, UWB allows trading a section of the ?bandwidth for power according to the Shannon?Hartley theorem. This means UWB communication systems can operate with ultralow power and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using different modulation and coding strategies. UWB signals have other inherent characteristics that make them suitable for the wireless interface of wearable biomedical sensors. Noiselike behavior due to the extremely low maximal effective isotropically radiated power (EIRP) spectral density of ?41.3 dBm/MHz makes UWB signals difficult to detect by NB systems and robust against jamming, potentially rescinding the need for complex encryption algorithms. Additionally, UWB signals do not represent a threat to patients? safety [2]. Much research has been done toward the use of BAN technology for ubiquitous monitoring of patients suffering from chronic diseases. Nevertheless, the commercial use of UWB for BAN has been limited in part by the FCC regulations, which restrict the communication applications to 3.1?10.6 GHz where propagation conditions in the body environment are rather unfavorable.

A Tablet PC based System for Ubiquitous Patient Monitoring and Smart Alert Generation in an Intensive Care Unit

Providing critical care to patients admitted to an ICU is a very important aspect in healthcare. This requires mechanisms for ubiquitous monitoring and smart alert generation systems. The conventional systems in many hospitals are not able to cope up with this requirement. So that medication and other required actions will be getting delayed making life difficult for a patient. These issues can be addressed by implementing a Tablet PC based system focussed on ICU based work flows. Designing and developing of Apps can provide better solutions for clinical data entry, patient monitoring and meaningful alert generation. The clinical data entry can be made easier with the help of a Tablet PC which offers a number of possibilities for organised data entry. Once the data becomes available; forms, charts, graphs etc can be generated easily without much manual intervention. Interfacing bed side monitors to the central server can provide automated and ubiquitous solutions for monitoring and analysis of patient data . Another important aspect is the way in which alert generation is made. In existing systems alerts are generated based on hard limits set by the clinical staff. There is a need to develop a more comprehensive system that holistically looks at all available information about the situation before generating an alert. Towards this, it should continuously monitor all vital signals available and evaluate the cross functional effects between them before arriving at the seriousness of the conditions leading to more meaningful alerts.

Distributed media-aware flow scheduling in cloud computing environment

Media-aware flow scheduling in cloud computing environment has attracted much attention nowadays because of the new possibilities they bring to many research and industry fields. Particularly, body area networks, as a typical computing environment application in healthcare, allow ubiquitous monitoring of patients, and more thorough patient diagnoses can be done with the help of multimedia service. In this work, we propose a novel media-aware flow scheduling architecture with the aims of improving the multimedia quality and increasing the network’s lifetime. In order to avoid interfering with the multimedia applications’ delay requirements, this work also proposes to analyze frames delay and jitter. The proposal has proven to improve the multimedia quality and decrease the transmission delay in a controllable manner, and thus the tradeoffs between QoS, lifetime, and delay requirements can be achieved according to the considered scenario. In addition, extensive simulation results validates the efficiency of the proposed method.

Enabling ubiquitous patient monitoring: Model, decision protocols, opportunities and challenges

Healthcare costs in the US are approximately 15% of GNP and are anticipated to reach 17% of GNP in the near future. Management of chronic diseases via technology based ubiquitous patient monitoring services has been widely proposed as a viable option for economizing healthcare resources, and providing efficient, quality healthcare. The process of ubiquitous patient monitoring is information intensive, the information generated is not only fragmented but also spans multiple processes, artifacts, parameters, and decision criteria. The current study explores the complexities associated with the process of ubiquitous patient monitoring and the enabling technologies. The key contribution is a framework that captures the complex processes, the parameters involved, and the decision criteria for ubiquitous patient monitoring. The decision protocols and enabling technologies supporting the processes are detailed in the study along with the opportunities and challenges of ubiquitous patient monitoring. A conceptual model of ubiquitous patient monitoring is developed by leveraging the proposed framework and is validated by a usage scenario. Finally, the implications of future research and contributions of the current research are discussed.

INFANT MONITORING SYSTEM BASED ON ARM EMBEDDED PLATFORM

Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and CommunicationsVol. 20, No. 05, pp. 269-275 (2008) No AccessINFANT MONITORING SYSTEM BASED ON ARM EMBEDDED PLATFORMCheng-Chi Tai, Jia-Ren Chang Chien, Cheng-Yu Wang, Lung-Chi Chen, Chia-Hung Chou, and Gone-Long WuCheng-Chi TaiDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of ChinaCorresponding author: Cheng-Chi Tai, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China. Tel.: +886-6-2757575/ext. 62388 Search for more papers by this author , Jia-Ren Chang ChienDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Search for more papers by this author , Cheng-Yu WangDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Search for more papers by this author , Lung-Chi ChenDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Search for more papers by this author , Chia-Hung ChouDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Search for more papers by this author , and Gone-Long WuDepartment of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Search for more papers by this author https://doi.org/10.4015/S1016237208000878Cited by:4 Next AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail AbstractSince both the parents need to work and look after their babies/infants simultaneously, the families bear more workload. Thus, this paper presents an innovative infant monitoring system consisting of an embedded system platform with a Linux kernel embedded operation system using the TCP/IP protocol, a CMOS image sensor, and peripheral control systems. The key feature of the system is that it can be used to monitor the living environment and the activities of the babies and/or infants through a web browser at any time from any place in the world. In order to increase the accuracy of the temperature sensor, the measured values from the digital temperature sensor were calibrated using regression analysis methods, resulting in an accuracy of ± 0.1°C, a correlation coefficient of 0.996, and a standard deviation of 0.124. The experimental results show that the proposed concept and the resulting system are feasible.Keywords:Infant monitoring systemARMEmbedded system References J. Yang and C. N. Manikopoulos, IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron. 38, 30 (1992). Crossref, ISI, Google ScholarN. Saranummi, IEEE Trans. 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Crossref, ISI, Google Scholar Remember to check out the Most Cited Articles! Notable Biomedical TitlesAuthors from Harvard, Rutgers University, University College London and more! FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited By 4An Intelligent Knowledge-Based and Customizable Home Care System Framework with Ubiquitous Patient Monitoring and Alerting TechniquesYen-Lin Chen, Hsin-Han Chiang, Chao-Wei Yu, Chuan-Yen Chiang and Chuan-Ming Liu et al.10 August 2012 | Sensors, Vol. 12, No. 8A CUSTOMIZED AND PORTABLE COMPONENT-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR INTELLIGENT HOMECARE SYSTEM DESIGN WITH VIDEO AND PHYSIOLOGICAL MONITORING MACHINERIESYen-Lin Chen, Chuan-Yen Chiang, Chao-Wei Yu, Shyan-Ming Yuan, and Zeng-Wei Hong25 April 2012 | Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications, Vol. 23, No. 05Implementation of a portable electronic system for providing pain relief to patellofemoral pain syndrome patientsJia-Ren Chang Chien, Guo-Hong Lin and Ar-Tyan Hsu1 Oct 2011 | Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 82, No. 10A HANDHELD ELECTRONIC PATIENT RECORD USING A NEW UML COMPONENT-BASED ARCHITECTUREJia-Ren Chang Chien25 April 2012 | Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications, Vol. 22, No. 06 Recommended Vol. 20, No. 05 Metrics History Accepted 26 July 2008 KeywordsInfant monitoring systemARMEmbedded systemPDF download