We developed a mobile system for collecting and communicating heart rate data in real-time using low cost, commonly available equipment. This system could be used to monitor patients with cardiac arrhythmia over long periods of time, hopefully increasing the chance of capturing and recording an actual fibrillation, which rarely is the case today. Such recordings are useful for physicians to find the right diagnosis. We have developed the system using the PalCom middleware and report on its usefulness for providing support for this kind of applications

Johnsson, Björn A

Magnusson, Boris

English

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITYPO Box 117221 00 Lund+46 46-222 00 00Developing Mobile Systems using PalCom -- A Data Collection ExampleJohnsson, Björn A; Magnusson, Boris2012Link to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Johnsson, B. A., & Magnusson, B. (2012). Developing Mobile Systems using PalCom -- A Data CollectionExample. Paper presented at Pervasive 2012, Newcastle, United Kingdom.Total number of authors:2General rightsUnless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply:Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authorsand/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by thelegal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private studyor research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portalRead more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will removeaccess to the work immediately and investigate your claim.Developing Mobile Systems using PalComA Data Collection ExampleBjörn A. Johnsson and Boris MagnussonDepartment of Computer Science,Faculty of Engineering LTH, Lund University{bjornaj,boris}@cs.lth.seAbstract. We developed a mobile system for collecting and communi-cating heart rate data in real-time using low cost, commonly availableequipment. This system could be used to monitor patients with cardiacarrhythmia over long periods of time, hopefully increasing the chance ofcapturing and recording an actual fibrillation, which rarely is the case to-day. Such recordings are useful for physicians to find the right diagnosis.We have developed the system using the PalCom middleware and reporton its usefulness for providing support for this kind of applications.Keywords: Mobile Systems, PalCom, Android, Data Collection, HeartRate Monitoring, Cardiac Arrhythmia1 IntroductionWhen constructing mobile systems there’s a large portion of overhead comparedto implementing the kernel of the actual problem. The overhead consists of e.g.managing networks connections, defining protocols, creating runnable applica-tions and user interfaces, etc. These aspects are merely needed to get a fullyworking system around the solution to the problem itself. To decrease the amountof overhead, a middleware that offers support for these aspects can be useful.This paper demonstrates how the PalCom middleware can be used to develop amobile system for collecting and communicating heart rate data. This concreteexample demands local offline storage, permanent online storage, inter-devicecommunication and network communication capabilities. For the proposed so-lution, the amount of overhead vs. the amount of work on the problem solutionwill be discussed.2 Diagnosing Cardiac ArrhythmiaFor people who suffer from cardiac arrhythmia, it is often difficult to establish areliable diagnosis. Fibrillation occurs infrequently, and usually not in controlledsituations. Existing portable ECG recorders are big, bulky and rarely presentwhen fibrillation occurs, such as when sporting or during other straining ac-tivities. Physicians thus often have to rely on the patient’s own recollection ofPervasive 2012 Posters Newcastle, UK, 18-22 June, 2012what happened during a fibrillation. Hence, a system where a simple, inexpen-sive mobile devices could constantly record the heart rate of a patient, therebycapturing the fibrillations, would be very valuable. Such a system is proposed tobe assembled from a commercial heart rate monitor, typically used when exer-cising, and a mobile phone – equipment that is light, mobile, cheap, easy to useand readily available. Using this equipment, the heart rate data of the patientcould be constantly collected and transmitted directly to a database, where aphysician could examine the results, in real-time or at his/her convenience.The prototype system works as illustrated in Fig. 1.Fig. 1. System functionality overview3 The PalCom MiddlewarePalCom [1] is a middleware framework used to combine the services offered bydifferent devices in an easy and flexible manner. By doing this, new functional-ity can be created by coordinating already existing services in new formations.In PalCom, all devices are represented by PalCom devices. Similarly, all func-tionality provided by such devices is presented in the form of PalCom services.This provides a homogeneous representation of system components, hiding com-plexity of systems using heterogeneous networks. Once created, these PalComcomponents can be used and reused in any number of solutions. PalCom com-ponents are selected and coordinated into PalCom systems by defining PalComassemblies. Assemblies have a configuration part, which defines what devices andservices to include, and a coordination part, which is a simple script to definethe coordinated behavior of services.4 System ArchitectureIn the constructed prototype system, the patients are issued a Garmin HRM1Gheart rate monitor (HRM) and a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini. Other hard-ware could easily be used, however since the communication between the HRMand the phone is done using the ultra-low power protocol ANT [2], both de-vices must support this protocol. Fig. 2 shows a slightly abbreviated technicaloverview of the prototype system.Fig. 2. Technical (PalCom) system overviewBy using PalCom to develop the system, most of the overhead traditionallyassociated with creating a system from the ground up was avoided. In Fig. 2, thePalCom services labeled ”Local DB” and ”Central DB” were already existingbuilding blocks that were reused for the system. The configuration and coordina-tion of the system was created with little effort using the scripts of the PalComassemblies. Note that no special work had to be carried out to handle that thesystem is distributed over three different sites. Using PalCom, this complexity ishidden. The graphical user interfaces (GUIs) used to control the system (labeled”Patient GUI” and ”Physician GUI” in Fig. 2) were generated from descriptionswritten in PUIML [3]. The approach taken in PUIML is to visualize PalComservices based on a given description. This enables the creation of complete ap-plications with reconfigurable PalCom GUIs, making them reusable for differentsystems.5 ConclusionsThe prototype system and its basic functionality is complete. The only detailedprogramming (in Java) needed to create this system was to make the informationprovided by the HRM over ANT available as a PalCom service, a matter of some500 lines of code1. With that available the system was put together using thePalCom middleware with scripted assemblies and GUIs. All the components areeasy to reuse in other applications, only creating other assemblies.6 Further WorkFurther work is needed mainly in the following areas:Battery Life Crude preliminary tests show an estimated battery life time ofabout 6–9 hours when the phone actively receives data from the HRM andtransmits it over Wi-Fi to the central database on a per second basis. Pre-liminary measurements indicate that battery life should be extendable toseveral days by updating at a rate of every 10 seconds, which should beappropriate.Other Middleware A discussion around how PalCom compares to other mid-dleware, such as BizTalk [4] and Obje [5], based on the experience withpresented system would be of interest.Evaluation So far, the system has been tested exclusively on the authors. Thesystem is to be evaluated in two steps. First, on a single technically savantperson that suffers from cardiac arrhythmia, with no involvement of a physi-cian. Second, on a select group of actual patients treated by a physician,where both the patients and the physician will be involved in the evaluation.References1. Svensson Fors, D., Magnusson, B., Gesteg̊ard Robertz, S., Hedin, G., Nilsson-Nyman, E.: Ad-hoc composition of pervasive services in the palcom architecture.In: Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Pervasive services. ICPS ’09,New York, NY, USA, ACM (2009) 83–922. ANT Wireless: What is ANT? http://www.thisisant.com/pages/technology/what-is-ant (2012) [Online; accessed 27-April-2012].3. Johnsson, B.A.: Adaptable android applications for PalCom based systems. Master’sthesis, Lund University (May 2011)4. Microsoft: Microsoft biztalk server. http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/ (2012)[Online; accessed 27-April-2012].5. Edwards, W.K., Newman, M.W., Sedivy, J., Smith, T., Izadi, S.: Challenge: recom-binant computing and the speakeasy approach. In: Proceedings of the 8th annualinternational conference on Mobile computing and networking. MobiCom ’02, NewYork, NY, USA, ACM (2002) 279–2861 Calculated using ”Lines of Code Counter”, http://java.net/projects/loc-counter/pages/Home [Online; accessed 27-April-2012]

Developing Mobile Systems using PalCom -- A Data Collection Example

https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6089802/4363105.pdf

Developing Mobile Systems using PalCom -- A Data Collection Example

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Lund University Publications