MoteCare: An adaptive smart BAN health monitoring system

An increasing aged population worldwide promises to test medical capabilities everywhere. A growing number of groups - research and commercial - have taken on this challenge of alleviating a potentially unmanageable situation. They are looking at existing and novel ways to care for the aged; however, it will still be some time before the medical profession will accept such new solutions. In this paper, the authors propose a smart, adaptive remote health monitoring system as a solution. They describe the building of a third implementation of a remote health monitoring prototype using Motes, a PDA, a personal server and a network management application to show that commodity-based hardware can be a viable solution. In addition, they describe their intent to use the prototype in developing a system that can adapt to the patient's condition and situation. Such an adaptive, smart body area network (BAN) system requires a number of issues to be addressed before commencing development; these will also be discussed

Awareness of wireless sensor network potential in healthcare industry: A second UTAUT study

This study concentrates on investigating the degree of awareness, future adoption and uptake of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) (in particular Motes) in the Health Monitoring arena via the use of our second Web-based survey. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has been applied to determine how viable this technology will be for health monitoring in healthcare institutions and patients' homes. Results from our study show positive support for the acceptance of the technology yet reveal some real concerns about the issues of security, privacy, ethics and safety

Towards Assistive Healthcare: prototyping advances in wireless sensor network (WSN) system integration and application

The large increase in Australia’s aging population promises to be major economic and social issue for local, state and federal Government bodies. The healthcare budget is expected to increase dramatically and the burden on healthcare services will require not only a massive injection of capital funds but an increase in qualified care givers. The authors believe that assistive healthcare monitoring is one viable and cost-effective solution to alleviate the burden of the healthcare system today and in the future. The authors in this paper describe their third Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) prototype called MoteCare and anticipate the implementation of the next, more advanced prototype. Details of the improvements are covered followed by an objective system evaluation and conclusion

Wireless remote healthcare monitoring with Motes

© 2005 IEEE. As the world's aged population grows many governments are looking to remote healthcare monitoring solutions. It is certainly cheaper to keep the elderly and infirm in their own homes rather than in aged-care facilities. However will these remote and wireless monitoring devices deliver what they promise? The medical profession needs strong evidence before they embrace such techniques. In this paper the authors describe the building of a remote monitoring prototype which uses motes, a PDA and a network management application to show that commodity-based hardware may provide one answer to the problem of remotely monitoring people in their own homes. Privacy and security issues associated with such monitoring are also discussed

An architecture for wearable, wireless, smart biosensors: The MoteCare prototype

Part of designing any system requires the development of an architecture on which the system and subsequent implementations are based. The architecture will vary depending on the requirements. For a healthcare monitoring application the researchers developed a four-tiered architecture that consists of the following layers: user interface, process management, database and sensor network. In this paper, the authors present their layered architecture for remote healthcare monitoring of aged and infirm persons and illustrate its advantages by describing their latest prototype which is called MoteCare. They also discuss the direction the researchers intend to take for the development of their fourth prototype, paying particular attention to the use of open source databases, the issue of security in the development of mote sensor networks (MSN) and the advantages of linking such systems with wireless broadband to enable potential users to achieve more mobility options. © 2006 IEEE