smart health monitoring
Smart T-shirt monitors health
Wireless sensor network technologies are considered one of the key research areas in computer science and the healthcare application industries for improving the quality of life. The current developments and future direction of research on wearable and implantable body area network systems for continuous monitoring of patients.
The importance of integrating large scale wireless telecommunication technologies such as 3G, Wi-Fi Mesh, and WiMAX, with telemedicine has already been addressed by some researchers. There are already several applications and prototypes for this purpose. For example, some of them are considered for continuous monitoring of people suffering from cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or similar diseases. Reference
- The healthcare-monitoring subsystem consists of the set of smart shirts to be worn by the patients. Each smart shirt is provided with a device (namely wearable data-acquisition device (WDAD)) to collect and process the physiological parameters and to transmit them wirelessly.
- The location subsystem consists of a beacon point (BP) infrastructure, which signals
well-known positions, and a set of end devices (namely wireless transmission boards (WTBs)) to be carried by targeted users (e.g., patients or any other personnel from the hospital). The BPs are deployed in well-known positions and send messages periodically to aid location. End devices (WTBs) collect signal strength information received from different BPs and send it wirelessly. For the sake of flexibility and versatility, the healthcare-monitoring subsystem and the location subsystem are completely hardware independent. Both the healthcare-monitoring parameters and the location information are transmitted and delivered to the management subsystem by the WSN subsystem. - The WSN subsystem consists, in general, of a set of devices (namely distribution points (DPs)), which transmit data ad hoc via a gateway that forwards them to the management subsystem. Therefore, the gateway consists of two different printed-circuit boards (PCBs): one to interface with the WSN infrastructure (gateway WTB) and one to interface with the wired infrastructure (gateway Ethernet transmission board (ETB)). Reference
Its armband uses sensors to collect 5,000 bits of data about the user’s body every minute. They are used to calculate activity levels, calories burned and how well its owner is sleeping at night – all of which can be monitored through a smartphone app. Its developers say the aim is to help people lose weight rather than become hypochondriacs