A Flexible and Scalable Architecture for Real-Time ANT+ Sensor Data Acquisition and NoSQL Storage

Wireless Personal or Body Area Networks (WPANs or WBANs) are the main mechanisms to develop healthcare systems for an ageing society. Such systems offer monitoring, security, and caring services by measuring physiological body parameters using wearable devices. Wireless sensor networks allow inexpensive, continuous, and real-time updates of the sensor data, to the data repositories via an Internet. A great deal of research is going on with a focus on technical, managerial, economic, and social health issues. The technical obstacles, which we encounter, in general, are better methodologies, architectures, and context data storage. Sensor communication, data processing and interpretation, data interchange format, data transferal, and context data storage are sensitive phases during the whole process of body parameter acquisition until the storage. ANT+ is a proprietary (but open access) low energy protocol, which supports device interoperability by mutually agreeing upon device profile standards. We have implemented a prototype, based upon ANT+ enabled sensors for a real-time scenario. This paper presents a system architecture, with its software organization, for real-time message interpretation, event-driven based real-time bidirectional communication, and schema flexible storage. A computer user uses it to acquire and to transmit the data using a Windows service to the context server

Open IOT-based telemedicine hub and infrastructure

In this paper, a unique healthcare solution is described that supports the even more effective operation of the hospital information systems. The main question is whether the emerging opportunities of the Internet of things devices can also be exploited in the industrial hospital information system landscape. This demonstrated research describes the most feasible way to integrate the Internet of things capability into hospital information production systems. The initial goal was the design and implementation of a single, unified telemedicine hub offering community-based solution for integrated medical systems. This solution allows the intercepted information to be collected and interpreted at community level. The designed and implemented system acts as a transmitter between the physician and patient. The software solution operates with sensor-based information collected from the individual. Emerging Internet of things devices and solutions open new horizons for today’s health care systems. The presented and detailed system provides the ability to real-time health-monitoring and in-depth health analyzing through open application programming interfaces. The telemedicine hub system makes it easier to integrate the Internet of things capability into the operating health care systems

Towards fog-driven IoT eHealth:Promises and challenges of IoT in medicine and healthcare

Internet of Things (IoT) offers a seamless platform to connect people and objects to one another for enriching and making our lives easier. This vision carries us from compute-based centralized schemes to a more distributed environment offering a vast amount of applications such as smart wearables, smart home, smart mobility, and smart cities. In this paper we discuss applicability of IoT in healthcare and medicine by presenting a holistic architecture of IoT eHealth ecosystem. Healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult to manage due to insufficient and less effective healthcare services to meet the increasing demands of rising aging population with chronic diseases. We propose that this requires a transition from the clinic-centric treatment to patient-centric healthcare where each agent such as hospital, patient, and services are seamlessly connected to each other. This patient-centric IoT eHealth ecosystem needs a multi-layer architecture: (1) device, (2) fog computing and (3) cloud to empower handling of complex data in terms of its variety, speed, and latency. This fog-driven IoT architecture is followed by various case examples of services and applications that are implemented on those layers. Those examples range from mobile health, assisted living, e-medicine, implants, early warning systems, to population monitoring in smart cities. We then finally address the challenges of IoT eHealth such as data management, scalability, regulations, interoperability, device–network–human interfaces, security, and privacy

WebNSM a novel scalable WebRTC signalling mechanism for many-to-many video conferencing

There is a strong focus on the use of Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) for many-to-many video conferencing, while the IETF working group has left the signalling issue on the application layer. The main aim of this paper is to create a novel scalable WebRTC signalling mechanism called WebNSM for many-to-many (bi-directional) video conferencing. WebNSM was designed for unlimited users over the mesh topology based on Socket.io (API) mechanism. A real implementation was achieved via LAN and WAN networks, including the evaluation of bandwidth consumption, CPU performance, memory usage, maximum links and RTPs calculation; and Quality of Experience (QoE). In addition, this application supplies video conferencing on different browsers without having to download additional software or user registration. The results present a novel signalling mechanism among various users, devices and networks to open one or multi rooms at the same time using the same server, determine room initiator to keep the session active even if the initiator or another peer leaves, sharing new user with current participants, etc. Moreover, this experiment highlights the limitations of CPU performance, bandwidth consumption and using mesh topology for WebRTC video conferencing

MODEL, ARCHITECTURE AND APPLICATION OF CROSS-PLATFORM JUST-IN-TIME ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION (JITAI): AN IMPLEMENTATION IN BEHAVIORAL SLEEP INTERVENTION

Cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) are common types of non-pharmacological therapy used in treating mental illnesses and behavioral disorders. Smartphone-based interventions have the potential for improving the delivery of traditional CBT with such novel features as personalization and context awareness. Assessments and interventions are best delivered when they are personalized to fit each individual’s needs and conditions. Just in Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) combines this personalized and adaptive intervention with the use of mobile technology. An increasing number of studies have been conducted to assess the effect of JITAI on regulating human health behavior, however there has been no published theoretical model underlying the use of smartphones and mobile devices in relation with JITAI. Therefore, this work aimed to provide 1) a behavioral model and application architecture for JITAI, 2) implementation of the JITAI model and application architecture on behavioral sleep intervention, 3) clinical and usability outcomes of the implementation, and 4) evaluate the model and its clinical feasibility. The JITAI model, architecture and application were designed to accommodate various adaptive health/behavioral interventions. Nevertheless, in this dissertation, sleep intervention was chosen as the case study because 1) sleep is universal recurrent behavior; 2) behavioral sleep treatments are “adaptive” treatment, highly manualized and have well defined outcome measurements. This cross-platform implementation of the JITAI architecture for sleep intervention is named the interactive Resilience Enhancing Sleep Tactics (iREST). The JITAI model, architecture and application were evaluated based on the result of usability and feasibility study of iREST system (n=22). The results suggest that the system were highly usable with a mean SUS (System Usability Scale) score of 85.74. Rate of treatment response (84.21%) and remission (68.42%) were greater than those reported on previous traditional (in-person) behavioral sleep intervention trial. This finding suggests that the JITAI model and architecture are feasible tools for designing and implementing adaptive health behavior intervention through mHealth

Using telemedicine WebRTC tests in hospital environment

A telemedicina tem acompanhado a evolução das tecnologias de informação e comunicação. É possível verificar o crescimento do desenvolvimento de projetos de telemedicina em diferentes países, existindo preocupação e apoio das organizações governamentais. O serviço de telemedicina é visto hoje em dia como forma de melhorar a qualidade de vida dos cidadãos. Devido à estrutura demográfica das populações, têm existido dificuldades em criar condições de prestação de serviços de saúde em zonas mais rurais e normalmente com populações mais idosas. O uso das tecnologias da informação e comunicação associado ao desenvolvimento de aplicações de telemedicina, pode contribuir para serviços de saúde com a mesma qualidade e independemente da distância a que o paciente se encontra das infraestruturas de saúde. As aplicações de telemedicina utilizadas são normalmente proprietárias e necessitam de instalação e configuração por parte dos pacientes e profissionais de saúde, por vezes, a custos muito elevados para as entidades possuidoras da aplicação. A utilização, por exemplo do Skype, pode ser considerada uma solução menos dispendiosa, no entanto é necessário a sua instalação prévia. No âmbito desta dissertação de mestrado foi implementada um solução de telemedicina desenvolvida com base nas características estudadas anteriormente na dissertação de mestrado com o título “Aplicações de telemedicina usando WebRTC” de Joaquim Barranca, nomeadamente, a capacidade de transmissão de áudio e vídeo, mensagens instantâneas e transferência de ficheiros usando a Application Programming Interface (API) do Web Real- Time Comunication (WebRTC) através do browser. A aplicação é composta unicamente por elementos de software livre, sobre a licença General Public License (GPL) e apenas necessita de um equipamento com suporte para browser compatível com o WebRTC, como o Google Chrome ou Mozilla Firefox. Pretende-se assim, implementar esta aplicação em cenário hospitalar, com o objetivo de obter resultados objetivos e subjetivos, de forma a recolher dados para análise da viabilidade da implementação do projeto em ambiente hospitalar utilizando oWebRTC numa aplicação de telemedicina. Os testes à aplicação implementada em cenário real foram realizados na Clínica de Tratamento Internacional – VillaRamadas por diferentes profissionais de saúde e por diferentes pacientes em regime de internamento e ambulatório durante os meses de julho e agosto entre as 9:00 e as 18:00 horas. Embora tenham sido detetadas algumas falhas nas funcionalidades da aplicação, os resultados obtidos na generalidade são bastante positivos prevendo-se boas perspetivas para a implementação deste tipo de serviço em mais unidades de saúde, nomeadamente no serviço público

Android-based application for monitoring the rehabilitation of patients with breast cancer

Hoy en día, el cáncer es una enfermedad muy común. Los pacientes necesitan mucho apoyo psicológico, una rutina terapéutica y un gran seguimiento por parte del personal sanitario. Acerca del cáncer de mama, éste tiene una alta probabilidad de ser superado en comparación con otros tipos de cáncer. Esta enfermedad conlleva, en muchos casos, la extirpación de la mama afectada, lo que requiere rehabilitación para recuperar la movilidad en la zona. En este proyecto, vamos a desarrollar una aplicación basada en Android para el teléfono móvil con el fin de ayudar a los médicos y pacientes en la rehabilitación desde casa. Con la ayuda de esta aplicación y algunos sensores que los pacientes tienen que colocar en sus brazos, será posible monitorizar los ejercicios y proporcionar una retroalimentación sobre el desempeño. Esto les ayuda a recuperarse evaluando el ejercicio inmediatamente. De esta manera, se pueden mostrar los errores en la ejecución de estos.Nowadays, cancer is a very common disease. Patients need a lot of psychological support, a routine and a lot of follow-up by healthcare personnel. Focusing more on breast cancer, it has a high probability of being overcome compared to other types of cancer. This disease leads, in some cases, in a breast removal, which leads to rehabilitation to recover mobility in the area. In this project, we are going to develop an Android-based application for the mobile phone to help doctors and patients in rehabilitation from home. With the help of this application and some sensors that patients have to place on their arms, it will be possible to monitor the exercises and to provide a feedback about the performance. This helps them to recover by evaluating the exercise immediately. In this way, errors in the execution of the exercises can be shown.Grado en Ingeniería Telemátic

Design for energy-efficient and reliable fog-assisted healthcare IoT systems

Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are two of the most dangerous diseases as they are the leading causes of death in all ages. Unfortunately, they cannot be completely cured with the current knowledge and existing technologies. However, they can be effectively managed by applying methods of continuous health monitoring. Nonetheless, it is difficult to achieve a high quality of healthcare with the current health monitoring systems which often have several limitations such as non-mobility support, energy inefficiency, and an insufficiency of advanced services. Therefore, this thesis presents a Fog computing approach focusing on four main tracks, and proposes it as a solution to the existing limitations. In the first track, the main goal is to introduce Fog computing and Fog services into remote health monitoring systems in order to enhance the quality of healthcare. In the second track, a Fog approach providing mobility support in a real-time health monitoring IoT system is proposed. The handover mechanism run by Fog-assisted smart gateways helps to maintain the connection between sensor nodes and the gateways with a minimized latency. Results show that the handover latency of the proposed Fog approach is 10%-50% less than other state-of-the-art mobility support approaches. In the third track, the designs of four energy-efficient health monitoring IoT systems are discussed and developed. Each energy-efficient system and its sensor nodes are designed to serve a specific purpose such as glucose monitoring, ECG monitoring, or fall detection; with the exception of the fourth system which is an advanced and combined system for simultaneously monitoring many diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Results show that these sensor nodes can continuously work, depending on the application, up to 70-155 hours when using a 1000 mAh lithium battery. The fourth track mentioned above, provides a Fog-assisted remote health monitoring IoT system for diabetic patients with cardiovascular disease. Via several proposed algorithms such as QT interval extraction, activity status categorization, and fall detection algorithms, the system can process data and detect abnormalities in real-time. Results show that the proposed system using Fog services is a promising approach for improving the treatment of diabetic patients with cardiovascular disease