Introduction
Wearable health monitoring systems integrated into a telemedicine system are novel information technology that will be able to support early detection of abnormal conditions and prevention of its serious consequences.
Many patients can benefit from continuous ambulatory monitoring as a part of a diagnostic procedure, optimal maintenance of a chronic condition or during supervised recovery from an acute event or surgical procedure.
Important limitations for wider acceptance of the existing systems for continuous monitoring are:
- unwieldy wires between sensors and a processing unit,
- lack of system integration of individual sensors,
- interference on a wireless communication channel shared by multiple devices, and
- nonexistent support for massive data collection and knowledge discovery.
Traditionally, personal medical monitoring systems, such as Holter monitors, have been used only to collect data for off-line processing. Systems with multiple sensors for physical rehabilitation feature unwieldy wires between electrodes and the monitoring system. These wires may limit the patient's activity and level of comfort and thus negatively influence the measured results.
A wearable health-monitoring device using a Personal Area Network (PAN) or Body Area Network (BAN) can be integrated into a user's clothing.
Recent technology advances in wireless networking, micro-fabrication, and integration of physical sensors, embedded microcontrollers and radio interfaces on a single chip, promise a new generation of wireless sensors suitable for many applications, such as stroke rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation after hip or knee surgeries, myocardial infarction rehabilitation, and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation.
Increased system processing power allows sophisticated real-time data processing on sensors, which reduces wireless channel utilization and power consumption. We propose a wireless BAN composed of off-the-shelf sensor platforms with application-specific signal conditioning modules.
System Overview
A general multi-tier system architecture is shown in Figure 1; the lowest level encompasses a set of intelligent physiological sensors; the second level is the personal server (Internet enabled PDA, cell-phone, or home computer); and the third level encompasses a network of remote health care servers and related services (Caregiver, Physician, Clinic, Emergency, Weather).
Each level represents a fairly complex subsystem with a local hierarchy employed to ensure efficiency, portability, security, and reduced cost. The personal server, running on a PDA or a 3G cell phone, provides the human-computer interface and communicates with the remote server(s).
Wireless Body Area Network of Intelligent Sensors for Ambulatory Health Monitoring
Wireless Intelligent Sensors
We developed several generations of wireless intelligents sensors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. We started with MSP430 family and custom wireless interface in 2000; we currently use off-the-shelf wireless sensors with the same microcontroller family and custom signal processing boards. Some of our projects are presented below.
ISPM_v3 (Intelligent Signal Processing Module), 2005
Features MSP430F1611 microcontroller, one ECG channel, one 3D accelerometer; Designed as a daugther card for Tmote Sky wireless platform.
SPM_v3 sensor card with one bioamplifier channel and on-board 3D accelerometer (U2 on the back side).
More....(refer)....
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