Sensor Networks in Pervasive Healthcare Computing

IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering, 2012

Today wireless sensor technology holds a remarkable position in each field like healthcare, war and environment. There is a strong need to collect physiological data and sensor networking in healthcare to focus on health-related applications of wireless sensor networks. In this review we introduced some representative applications in the healthcare arena and depict the challenges which innovate to ensure the privacy and security of medical data. The recent enhancements in WSN have given rise to many application areas in healthcare and introduced a new field Wireless Body Area Networks, Which aim to improve different aspects of our lives using vesture and non-vesture sensor devices. Humans can be tracked and monitored, Even if it is with the consent of the person involved but certain social issues arise from this type of application scenario. The issues can be privacy, security, legal and other related issues. In this paper we detail our experiences to explain several prototypes and discuss the driving force behind home health monitoring and focus on how current (and future) technologies will enable automated home health monitoring. A sensor node consist small microprocessor integrated with number of sensors.

This paper presents best practices in wireless sensor network design for health care applications. Based on the most important aspects like power efficiency and security which guide the development of a wireless sensor network based e-health applications, we introduce novel system architecture for health care WSNs.

2018

Throughout the stunning development of wireless communication technologies, sensors and wireless sensor networks (WSN) are being used in almost every area, such as in healthcare field. The ubiquitous sensing enabled by WSN technologies, in particularly the wireless medical sensor network (WMSN), might be one important key success factor in the modern medical system. The recent advances, and wireless devices proliferation, had proved the technical feasibility of the pervasive health care systems. The data collected by sensors are very sensitive and important, and the leakage of them could compromise security and privacy. This work presents the pervasive health care systems (PHCS) focusing on security and privacy of pervasive environments.

Mobile Networks and Applications, 2013

Each human being is unique. This requires medical decisions, practices, and products being tailored to the individual patient. To allow good medical practices, it is necessary to know the history and the genetic predisposition of individuals, as well as their current lifestyle and daily routine. In some cases, the data needed to assess the good functioning and evaluate the performance of a human body can be even larger, e.g. with elderly people, children, athletes, disabled people and people who had health problems in the past. Personalized medicine demands an increased focus on preparing pervasive healthcare systems and applications deployed around users and capable of remotely caring for them and improving their health and well-being anywhere anytime. These systems and applications require a sophisticated integration of microcircuit, medical sensing, and wireless and mobile technologies. They largely benefit users by decreasing the dependability on special caregivers and eventually reducing healthcare expenses through a more efficient use of healthcare resources and an earlier detection of life-threatening emergency situations. However, the realization of pervasive healthcare sets some additional critical requirements, e.g. realtimeness and faulttolerance, and reliability, security and efficiency challenges compared with traditional hospital-based systems. Exploitation of Information and Communications Technologies as well as Networking and Sensors Technologies will enable cost-effective and efficient healthcare delivery, capable to deal with physical and logical mobility of patients and devices.

More and more people are seeking for medical attention every day, on the other hand, technology advancements also widens its scope. The emergence of Wireless Sensor Network technology has reached upon the healthcare systems, and this will be the paper's topic of discussion. This converses about environment-emplaced and patient-attached sensors. Furthermore, this article talks about the functions of wireless healthcare systems.

2012

The advancements in MicroElectoroMechanical Systems (MEMS) and communication technologies have resulted in the development of low cost and small size sensors which can be even injected into human body. This development has put enormous effect on medical healthcare and has replaced the traditional equipments and procedures with small sized sensors. This paper provides an overview of the impact of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) on medical healthcare. Wireless Sensor Networks can be found in various healthcare applications. This paper focuses on the applications of WSN which provides all-time monitoring to the user and either avoids the dangerous situation or is capable to take appropriate actions in case of emergency. We highlight the major challenges WSN faces when implemented in medical healthcare applications.

Wireless Sensor Networks an emerging field has find its presence in Medical Science. It has produced new field of Wireless Body Area Networks. Using wearable and non-wearable sensor devices information on human activity can be monitored with or without the consent of confidentiality of a particular person. But there is an apprehension that social issues may arise from this type of application scenario. The issues can be privacy, security, legal and other related issues. Medical Science sensor networks applications have great potential in the medical field. But there are some important social issues involved. The issues need to be carefully tackled with understanding. Else they can pose serious problems. In this paper some issues pertaining to privacy are discussed. The paper also discusses some security issues related to the Wireless Sensor networks and applications. Keywords:

Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, 2005

Sensor networks have the potential to greatly impact many aspects of medical care. By outfitting patients with wireless, wearable vital sign sensors, collecting detailed real-time data on physiological status can be greatly simplified. However, there is a significant gap between existing sensor network systems and the needs of medical care. In particular, medical sensor networks must support multicast routing topologies, node mobility, a wide range of data rates and high degrees of reliability, and security. This paper describes our experiences with developing a combined hardware and software platform for medical sensor networks, called CodeBlue. CodeBlue provides protocols for device discovery and publish/subscribe multihop routing, as well as a simple query interface that is tailored for medical monitoring. We have developed several medical sensors based on the popular MicaZ and Telos mote designs, including a pulse oximeter, EKG and motion-activity sensor. We also describe a new, miniaturized sensor mote designed for medical use. We present initial results for the CodeBlue prototype demonstrating the integration of our medical sensors with the publish/subscribe routing substrate. We have experimentally validated the prototype on our 30-node sensor network testbed, demonstrating its scalability and robustness as the number of simultaneous queries, data rates, and transmitting sensors are varied. We also study the effect of node mobility, fairness across multiple simultaneous paths, and patterns of packet loss, confirming the system's ability to maintain stable routes despite variations in node location and data rate.

The recent advances in Wireless Sensor Networks have given rise to many application areas in healthcare. It has produced new field of Wireless Body Area Networks. Using wearable and non-wearable sensor devices humans can be tracked and monitored. Monitoring from the healthcare perspective can be with or without the consent of the particular person. Even if it is with the consent of the person involved, certain social issues arise from this type of application scenario. The issues can be privacy, security, legal and other related issues. Healthcare sensor networks applications have a bright future and it is a must to take up these issues at the earliest. The issues should be carefully studied and understood or else they can pose serious problems. In this paper we try to raise and discuss these issues and find some answers to them.

The need for technology to assist in medical monitoring applications is becoming more necessary in society as the number of patients in hospital and clinics continues to grow. The demand on staff to monitor every individual consistently becomes necessary. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are now being used to facilitate this on-demand monitoring both at the patients home and in the hospital/clinic environment. This paper looks at the basic parameters necessary for a medical based WSN with particular focus on communication platforms and their security. These parameters will be compared and contrasted, and the main components necessary to form an ideal medical WSN will be highlighted.