Healthcare PANs: Personal Area Networks for trauma care and home care

The first hour following the trauma is of crucial importance in trauma care. The sooner treatment begins, the better the ultimate outcome for the patient. Generally the initial treatment is handled by paramedical personnel arriving at the site of the accident with an ambulance. There is evidence to show that if the expertise of the on-site paramedic team can be supported by immediate and continuous access to and communication with the expert medical team at the hospital, patient outcomes can be improved. After care also influences the ultimate recovery of the patient. After-treatment follow up often occurs in-hospital in spite of the fact that care at home can offer more advantages and can accelerate recovery. Based on emerging and future wireless communication technologies, in a previous paper [1] we presented an initial vision of two future healthcare settings, supported by applications which we call Virtual Trauma Team and Virtual Homecare Team. The Virtual Trauma Team application involves high quality wireless multimedia communications between ambulance paramedics and the hospital facilitated by paramedic Body Area Networks (BANs) [2] and an ambulance-based Vehicle Area Network (VAN). The VAN supports bi-directional streaming audio and video communication between the ambulance and the hospital even when moving at speed. The clinical motivation for Virtual Trauma Team is to increase survival rates in trauma care. The Virtual Homecare Team application enables homecare coordinated by home nursing services and supported by the patient's PAN which consists of a patient BAN in combination with an ambient intelligent home environment. The homecare PAN provides intelligent monitoring and support functions and the possibility to ad hoc network to the visiting health professionals’ own BANs as well as high quality multimedia communication links to remote members of the virtual team. The motivation for Virtual Homecare Team is to improve quality of life and independence for patients by supporting care at home; the economic motivation is to replace expensive hospital-based care with homecare by virtual teams using wireless technology to support the patient and the carers. In this paper we develop the vision further and focus in particular on the concepts of personal and body area networks

Telematic Requirements for Emergency and Disaster Response derived from Enterprise Models

One of the prime objectives in disaster response management is to achieve full control of the situation as rapidly as possible. Coordination and communication facility therefore plays an essential role in managing disasters. This chapter discusses Enterprise Models that capture the invariant structures of medical emergency and disaster response management using notions like tasks, roles and agents. On one hand, these notions are generic enabling the model to cope with a broad range of events, from complex, dynamic and multifaceted disasters to more routine medical emergency cases. On the other hand, refinements of the models to specialized cases reveal the coordination and communication needs which are aligned with the context (i.e. the task objectives). This paves the way for dynamic selections of computing and network resource alternatives, possibly scarcely available on the scene, that match with the coordination and communication needs, for instance, hand-offs to a better communication alternative, possibly using a different wireless technology. The Enterprise models, which separate roles responsible for the tasks from the agents assigned to those roles, have the advantage that roles can be virtually moved to the scene of the disaster without the need to transport all agents to the scene. This latter is a simple form of an augmented reality environment, which brings on-site reality at the scene of the disaster into the scope of command and control of off-site teams or team members. A mobile telematic system is needed to bridge the coordination and communication spatial gap between roles or agents; its requirements however can be derived from the Enterprise models

Body Area Networks for Healthcare

The subject of this research proposal is the design and development of novel applications and services targeting 4G wireless technologies. In previous papers [1, 2] we presented a vision of two future healthcare applications which we call Virtual Trauma Team and Virtual Homecare Team. These are two instances of the wider concept of Virtual Health Care Teams. These applications are based on emerging and future wireless communication technologies. The technical research required to realise the vision of Virtual Health Care Teams (VHCTs) involves a number of areas including wireless transmission systems supporting broadband access, vehicle-based (fast roaming) networks (VANs), Body Area Networks (BANs), Personal Area Networks (PANs) and ambient intelligent environments, with ad hoc networking enabling communication between (roaming) professionals, clients and patients. In our vision of future delivery of healthcare by VHCTs we anticipate ubiquitous use of BANs by citizens in general and by health professionals, other carers and patients. This current research proposal focuses on applications relating to the BAN elements of the VHCT vision

Telematic Requirements for Emergency and Disaster Response derived from Enterprise Models

One of the prime objectives in disaster response management is to achieve full control of the situation as rapidly as possible. Coordination and communication facility therefore plays an essential role in managing disasters. This chapter discusses Enterprise Models that capture the invariant structures of medical emergency and disaster response management using notions like tasks, roles and agents. On one hand, these notions are generic enabling the model to cope with a broad range of events, from complex, dynamic and multifaceted disasters to more routine medical emergency cases. On the other hand, refinements of the models to specialized cases reveal the coordination and communication needs which are aligned with the context (i.e. the task objectives). This paves the way for dynamic selections of computing and network resource alternatives, possibly scarcely available on the scene, that match with the coordination and communication needs, for instance, hand-offs to a better communication alternative, possibly using a different wireless technology. The Enterprise models, which separate roles responsible for the tasks from the agents assigned to those roles, have the advantage that roles can be virtually moved to the scene of the disaster without the need to transport all agents to the scene. This latter is a simple form of an augmented reality environment, which brings on-site reality at the scene of the disaster into the scope of command and control of off-site teams or team members. A mobile telematic system is needed to bridge the coordination and communication spatial gap between roles or agents; its requirements however can be derived from the Enterprise models