Motivation
The AlarmNet architecture for smart healthcare possesses the essential elements of each of the future medical applications described before, namely:
- integration with existing medical practices and technology,
- real-time, long-term monitoring,
- miniature, wearable sensors, and
- assistance to the elderly and chronic patients.
It extends healthcare from the traditional clinic or hospital setting to assisted-living and retirement homes, enabling telecare without the prohibitive costs of retrofitting existing structures.
Currently, patients visit doctors at regular intervals, self-reporting experienced symptoms, problems, and conditions. Doctors conduct various tests to arrive at a diagnosis and then must monitor patient progress throughout treatment.
In AlarmNet, the WSN collects data according to a physician's specifications, removing some of the cognitive burden from the patient (who may suffer age-related memory decline) and providing a continuous record to assist diagnosis. Health-related tasks are also made easier for the patient, for example, medication reminders, object location, and emergency communication.
The architecture is multi-tiered, with lightweight sensors, mobile components, and more powerful stationary devices. Sensors are heterogeneous, and all integrate into the network. Multiple patients and their resident family members are differentiated for sensing tasks and access privileges.
What are the advantages of a WSN?
Wireless sensor networks are ideally suited as a foundation for smart healthcare in AlarmNet, due to several inherent qualities:
Portability and unobtrusiveness. Small devices collect data and communicate wirelessly, operating with minimal patient input. They may be carried on the body or deeply embedded in the environment. Unobtrusiveness helps with patient acceptance and minimizes confounding measurement effects. Since monitoring is done in the living space, the patient travels less often, which is safer and more convenient.
Ease of deployment and scalability. Devices can be deployed in potentially large quantities with dramatically less complexity and cost compared to wired networks. Existing structures, particularly dilapidated ones, can be easily augmented with a WSN network whereas wired installations would be expensive and impractical. Devices are placed in the living space and turned on, self-organizing and calibrating automatically.
Real-time and always-on. Physiological and environmental data can be monitored continuously, allowing real-time response by emergency or healthcare workers. The data collected form a health journal, and are valuable for filling in gaps in the traditional patient history. Even though the network as a whole is always-on, individual sensors still must conserve energy through smart power management.
Reconfigurability and self-organization. Since there is no fixed installation, adding and removing sensors instantly reconfigures the network. Doctors may re-target the mission of the network as medical needs change. Sensors self-organize to form routing paths, collaborate on data processing, and establish hierarchies.
Who does it benefit?
The system benefits both the healthcare providers and their patients. For the providers, an automatic monitoring system is valuable for many reasons. Firstly, it frees humans from 24/7 physical monitoring, reducing labor costs and increasing efficiency. Secondly, wearable sensor devices can sense even small changes in vital signals that humans might overlook, for example, heart rate and blood oxygen levels, boosting accuracy. Quickly notifying of these changes may save human lives. Thirdly, the data collected from the wireless sensor network can be stored and integrated into a comprehensive health record of each patient, which helps physicians make more informed diagnoses. Eventually, the analyzing, diagnosis, treatment process may also be semi-automated, so a human physician can be assisted by an electronic physician.
Healthcare patients benefit from improved health as a result of faster diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Other quality-of-life issues, such as privacy, dignity, and convenience, are supported and enhanced by the ability to provide services in an environment more comfortable for the patient. Though 24/7 physical presence of caregivers is reduced, the patient is not isolated from contact with the outside world—an important component of mental health. Family members and the system itself become part of the healthcare team. Finally, memory aids and other patient-assistance services can restore some lost independence, while preserving safety.