Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated

MobiHealth: Ambulant Patient Monitoring Over Next Generation Public Wireless Networks

The wide availability of high bandwidth public wireless networks as well as the miniaturisation of medical sensors and network access hardware allows the development of advanced ambulant patient monitoring systems. The MobiHealth project developed a complete system and service that allows the continuous monitoring of vital signals and their transmission to the health care institutes in real time using GPRS and UMTS networks. The MobiHealth system is based on the concept of a Body Area Network (BAN) allowing high personalization of the monitored signals and thus adaptation to different classes of patients. The system and service has been trialed in four European countries and for different patient cases. First results confirm the usefulness of the system and the advantages it offers to patients and medical personnel

Mobile Patient Monitoring: The Mobihealth System

The forthcoming wide availability of high bandwidth public wireless networks will give rise to new mobile healthcare services. To this end, the MobiHealth project has developed and trialed a highly customisable vital signs monitoring system based on a body area network (BAN) and a mobile-health (m-health) service platform utilising next generation public wireless networks. The developed system allows the incorporation of diverse medical sensors via wireless connections, and the live transmission of the measured vital signs over public wireless networks to healthcare providers. Nine trials with different healthcare scenarios and patient groups in four different European countries have been conducted. These have been performed to test the service and the network infrastructure including its suitability for mobile healthcare applications. Preliminary results have documented the feasibility of using the system, but also demonstrated logistical problems with use of the BANs and the infrastructure for transmitting mobile healthcare data

MOFBAN: a lightweight modular framework for body area networks

The increasing use of wireless networks, the constant miniaturization of electrical devices and the growing interest for remote health monitoring has led to the development of wireless on-body networks or WBANs. The research on communication in this type of network is still at it's infancy. The first communication protocols are being proposed, but a general architecture that can be used to integrate the protocols easily is still lacking. However, such an architecture could trigger the development of new protocols and ease the use of WBANs. In this paper, we present a lightweight modular framework for body area networks (MOFBAN). A modular structure is used which allows for a higher flexibility and improved energy efficiency. The paper first investigates the challenges and requirements needed for sending messages in a WBAN. Further, we discuss how this framework can be used when designing new protocols by defining the different components of the framework