e-SCP-ECG+ Protocol: An Expansion on SCP-ECG Protocol for Health Telemonitoring—Pilot Implementation

Standard Communication Protocol for Computer-assisted Electrocardiography (SCP-ECG) provides standardized communication among different ECG devices and medical information systems. This paper extends the use of this protocol in order to be included in health monitoring systems. It introduces new sections into SCP-ECG structure for transferring data for positioning, allergies, and five additional biosignals: noninvasive blood pressure (NiBP), body temperature (Temp), Carbon dioxide (CO2), blood oxygen saturation (SPO2), and pulse rate. It also introduces new tags in existing sections for transferring comprehensive demographic data. The proposed enhanced version is referred to as e-SCP-ECG+ protocol. This paper also considers the pilot implementation of the new protocol as a software component in a Health Telemonitoring System

Wireless remote patient monitoring on general hospital wards.

A novel approach which has potential to improve quality of patient care on general hospital wards is proposed. Patient care is a labour-intensive task that requires high input of human resources. A Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) system is proposed which can go some way towards improving patient monitoring on general hospital wards. In this system vital signs are gathered from patients and sent to a control unit for centralized monitoring. The RPM system can complement the role of nurses in monitoring patients’ vital signs. They will be able to focus on holistic needs of patients thereby providing better personal care. Wireless network technologies, ZigBee and Wi-Fi, are utilized for transmission of vital signs in the proposed RPM system. They provide flexibility and mobility to patients. A prototype system for RPM is designed and simulated. The results illustrated the capability, suitability and limitation of the chosen technology

A Lightweight Blockchain and Fog-enabled Secure Remote Patient Monitoring System

IoT has enabled the rapid growth of smart remote healthcare applications. These IoT-based remote healthcare applications deliver fast and preventive medical services to patients at risk or with chronic diseases. However, ensuring data security and patient privacy while exchanging sensitive medical data among medical IoT devices is still a significant concern in remote healthcare applications. Altered or corrupted medical data may cause wrong treatment and create grave health issues for patients. Moreover, current remote medical applications' efficiency and response time need to be addressed and improved. Considering the need for secure and efficient patient care, this paper proposes a lightweight Blockchain-based and Fog-enabled remote patient monitoring system that provides a high level of security and efficient response time. Simulation results and security analysis show that the proposed lightweight blockchain architecture fits the resource-constrained IoT devices well and is secure against attacks. Moreover, the augmentation of Fog computing improved the responsiveness of the remote patient monitoring system by 40%.Comment: 32 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables, accepted by Elsevier "Internet of Things; Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems" journal on January 9, 202

Non-Invasive Data Acquisition and IoT Solution for Human Vital Signs Monitoring: Applications, Limitations and Future Prospects

The rapid development of technology has brought about a revolution in healthcare stimulating a wide range of smart and autonomous applications in homes, clinics, surgeries and hospitals. Smart healthcare opens the opportunity for a qualitative advance in the relations between healthcare providers and end-users for the provision of healthcare such as enabling doctors to diagnose remotely while optimizing the accuracy of the diagnosis and maximizing the benefits of treatment by enabling close patient monitoring. This paper presents a comprehensive review of non-invasive vital data acquisition and the Internet of Things in healthcare informatics and thus reports the challenges in healthcare informatics and suggests future work that would lead to solutions to address the open challenges in IoT and non-invasive vital data acquisition. In particular, the conducted review has revealed that there has been a daunting challenge in the development of multi-frequency vital IoT systems, and addressing this issue will help enable the vital IoT node to be reachable by the broker in multiple area ranges. Furthermore, the utilization of multi-camera systems has proven its high potential to increase the accuracy of vital data acquisition, but the implementation of such systems has not been fully developed with unfilled gaps to be bridged. Moreover, the application of deep learning to the real-time analysis of vital data on the node/edge side will enable optimal, instant offline decision making. Finally, the synergistic integration of reliable power management and energy harvesting systems into non-invasive data acquisition has been omitted so far, and the successful implementation of such systems will lead to a smart, robust, sustainable and self-powered healthcare system

Security Issues in Healthcare Applications Using Wireless Medical Sensor Networks: A Survey

Healthcare applications are considered as promising fields for wireless sensor networks, where patients can be monitored using wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs). Current WMSN healthcare research trends focus on patient reliable communication, patient mobility, and energy-efficient routing, as a few examples. However, deploying new technologies in healthcare applications without considering security makes patient privacy vulnerable. Moreover, the physiological data of an individual are highly sensitive. Therefore, security is a paramount requirement of healthcare applications, especially in the case of patient privacy, if the patient has an embarrassing disease. This paper discusses the security and privacy issues in healthcare application using WMSNs. We highlight some popular healthcare projects using wireless medical sensor networks, and discuss their security. Our aim is to instigate discussion on these critical issues since the success of healthcare application depends directly on patient security and privacy, for ethic as well as legal reasons. In addition, we discuss the issues with existing security mechanisms, and sketch out the important security requirements for such applications. In addition, the paper reviews existing schemes that have been recently proposed to provide security solutions in wireless healthcare scenarios. Finally, the paper ends up with a summary of open security research issues that need to be explored for future healthcare applications using WMSNs

A synergistic wearable health monitoring system using cellular network technology

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017This thesis presents a synergistic approach to healthcare applications by integrating a wearable health monitoring system into a smart home system. By exploiting synergy within each system and between these two systems, this thesis shows that the efficiency of the health care can be increased while providing the added advantage of utmost user-friendly environment. Initially, a wearable health monitoring prototype system was developed for vital sign data collection and processing. The developed system used biosensor integration to distinguish amongst multiple physical activities and to compare the variations in physiological conditions according to physical activity of the user. Afterward, system learning techniques were established for accomplishing the scalability of the health monitoring system. The resulting system is able to monitor different users without the need for explicitly changing the thresholds for the individual user. The health monitoring was further improved through integration with the smart home system to exploit synergy between various physiological sensors and to reduce false alarms generated by the system. A cellular communication interface was developed for transmitting the collected data to a remote caregiver and also to store the time-stamped data on the online web server. A web interface was developed to allow monitoring user's health and activity data, along with their surrounding environment

Wireless remote patient monitoring on general hospital wards

A novel approach which has potential to improve quality of patient care on general hospital wards is proposed. Patient care is a labour-intensive task that requires high input of human resources. A Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) system is proposed which can go some way towards improving patient monitoring on general hospital wards. In this system vital signs are gathered from patients and sent to a control unit for centralized monitoring. The RPM system can complement the role of nurses in monitoring patients’ vital signs. They will be able to focus on holistic needs of patients thereby providing better personal care. Wireless network technologies, ZigBee and Wi-Fi, are utilized for transmission of vital signs in the proposed RPM system. They provide flexibility and mobility to patients. A prototype system for RPM is designed and simulated. The results illustrated the capability, suitability and limitation of the chosen technology.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Wireless sensor networks for medical care.

Chen, Xijun.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-77).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Design Challenges --- p.2Chapter 1.2 --- Wireless Sensor Network Applications --- p.6Chapter 1.2.1 --- Military Applications --- p.7Chapter 1.2.2 --- Environmental Applications --- p.9Chapter 1.2.3 --- Health Applications --- p.11Chapter 1.3 --- Wireless Biomedical Sensor Networks (WBSN) --- p.12Chapter 1.4 --- Text Organization --- p.13Chapter Chapter 2 --- Design a Wearable Platform for Wireless Biomedical Sensor Networks --- p.15Chapter 2.1 --- Objective --- p.17Chapter 2.2 --- Requirements for Wireless Medical Sensors --- p.19Chapter 2.3 --- Hardware design --- p.21Chapter 2.3.1 --- Materials and Methods --- p.21Chapter 2.3.2 --- Results --- p.24Chapter 2.3.3 --- Conclusion --- p.27Chapter 2.4 --- Software design --- p.28Chapter 2.4.1 --- TinyOS --- p.28Chapter 2.4.2 --- Software Organization --- p.28Chapter Chapter 3 --- Wireless Medical Sensors --- p.32Chapter 3.1 --- Sensing Physiological Information --- p.32Chapter 3.1.1 --- Pulse Oximetry --- p.32Chapter 3.1.2 --- Electrocardiograph --- p.36Chapter 3.1.3 --- Galvanic Skin Response --- p.41Chapter 3.2 --- Location Tracking --- p.43Chapter 3.2.1 --- Outdoor Location Tracking --- p.43Chapter 3.2.2 --- Indoor Location Tracking --- p.44Chapter 3.3 --- Motion Tracking --- p.49Chapter 3.3.1 --- Technology --- p.50Chapter 3.3.2 --- Motion Analysis Sensor Board --- p.51Chapter 3.4 --- Discussions --- p.52Chapter Chapter 4 --- Applications in Medical Care --- p.54Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.54Chapter 4.2 --- Wearable Wireless Body Area Network --- p.56Chapter 4.2.1 --- Architecture --- p.58Chapter 4.2.2 --- Deployment Scenarios --- p.62Chapter 4.3 --- Application in Ambulatory Setting --- p.63Chapter 4.3.1 --- Method --- p.64Chapter 4.3.2 --- The Software Architecture --- p.66Chapter Chapter 5 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.69References --- p.72Appendix --- p.7