Application of wireless sensor networks to healthcare promotion

article

Neves, P.A.C.S.
Stachyra, Michal
Rodrigues, Joel

Croatian Communications and Information Society

NEVES, Paulo ; STACHYRA, Michal ; RODRIGUES, Joel - Application of wireless sensor networks to healthcare promotion. Journal of Communications Software and Systems. ISSN: 1845-6421. Vol. 4, nº. 3 (2008), p.181-190

1845-6241

Application of wireless sensor networks to healthcare promotion

Wireless sensor networks
Healthcare
Body sensor networks
M-health
Biofeedback
Smart biosensor

2011-02-23T17:22:32Z
2011-02-23T17:22:32Z
2008-09

Born on military applications, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) application grew on the promise of environment sensing and data processing capability at low cost. These networks can hold hundreds or even thousands of smart sensing nodes with processing and sensing capabilities and even integrated power through a dedicated battery. This paper surveys on the application of wireless sensor networks to healthcare promotion, namely with the use of biosensor technology applied to body sensor networks. On a wireless body sensor network, a person wears biosensors to gather data, while doing their daily activities. Currently, engineers and medical staff are cooperating on finding new ways to properly gather meaningful data on-site and achieve a convenient way to process these data for research and on-site medical decision. New challenges that such approach brings are also considered. Moreover, it is shown that wireless sensor networks provide the technology to built wireless sensing and create a convenient infrastructure for multiple data gathering in healthcare applications. Together with real successful examples, we demonstrate the great usefulness of wireless sensor networks in healthcare promotion. The paper concludes with some guidelines for future work.

openAccess

eng