An open and reconfigurable wireless sensor network for pervasive health monitoring.
OBJECTIVE
Sensor networks constitute the backbone for the construction of personalized monitoring systems. Up to now, several sensor networks have been proposed for diverse pervasive healthcare applications, which are however characterized by a significant lack of open architectures, resulting in closed, non-interoperable and difficult to extend solutions. In this context, we propose an open and reconfigurable wireless sensor network (WSN) for pervasive health monitoring, with particular emphasis in its easy extension with additional sensors and functionality by incorporating embedded intelligence mechanisms.


METHODS
We consider a generic WSN architecture comprised of diverse sensor nodes (with communication and processing capabilities) and a mobile base unit (MBU) operating as the gateway between the sensors and the medical personnel, formulating this way a body area network (BAN). The primary focus of this work is on the intra-BAN data communication issues, adopting SensorML as the data representation mean, including the encoding of the monitoring patterns and the functionality of the sensor network.


RESULTS
In our prototype implementation two sensor nodes are emulated; one for heart rate monitoring and the other for blood glucose observations, while the MBU corresponds to a personal digital assistant (PDA) device. Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is used to implement both the sensor nodes and the MBU components. Intra-BAN wireless communication relies on the Blue-tooth protocol. Via an adaptive user interface in the MBU, health professionals may specify the monitoring parameters of the WSN and define the monitoring patterns of interest in terms of rules.


CONCLUSIONS
This work constitutes an essential step towards the construction of open, extensible, inter-operable and intelligent WSNs for pervasive health monitoring.
Triantafyllidis
A
A
Lab of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Aristotle University, P.O. Box 323, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Koutkias
V
V
Chouvarda
I
I
Maglaveras
N
N
D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000502:physiology*; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000295:instrumentation*; D006115:Greece; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D010865:Pilot Projects; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods
D001786:Blood Glucose